


The Magic Mirror and the Sea Dragon: A Johnlock Fairy Tale

by Morwen_Eledhwen



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alpha!Sherlock, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bonding, Case Fic, Everyone loves John, Gift Fic, Johnlock - Freeform, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, No mpreg, Omega Verse, Omega!John, References to Dub/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:03:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morwen_Eledhwen/pseuds/Morwen_Eledhwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson doesn't <em>mind</em> being an Omega. It's how everyone else deals with it -and him- that's driving him round the twist. Luckily he happens to share a flat with one of the world's foremost scholars in human behavior. With Sherlock Holmes on the case, will John discover the root of the Mystery of the Persistent C-word? Or will the search take them to the heart of John himself?</p><p>Written for <a href="http://makanivalur.tumblr.com/">makanivalur</a> as part of the <a href="http://johnlockchallenges.tumblr.com/">johnlockchallenges</a> November 2012 gift exchange. The prompt was simply "Omega!John".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Makani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makani/gifts).



> **PLEASE NOTE** : This is Chapter 1 of what has turned into a **MULTI-CHAPTER** fic. Because apparently I'm incapable of either writing a truly short short story or of making a deadline. Our last day to post gifts is actually Dec. 4th and I _might_ possibly get Chapter 2 up by then, but I really wanted to be sure to have something in time for the person who has, through her prompt, allowed me to dream up and post this story which I might not have done otherwise. I take a lot of (sometimes guilty) pleasure in reading Omegaverse fic but have never actually written one or considered it until this gift exchange challenge came up. And I like what I've written, as well as what's in store. I hope you do too.
> 
> Potential trigger warnings for references to dub/non-con, though nothing of that nature actually happens in the story. But the work is rated M for that, for language, and for eventual M/M goodness.

* * *

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” snarls John Watson, and heaves himself off his seat at the bar. “I’m leaving.”

“What? What did I say?” The man who had been sitting next to him seems genuinely confused. “Come on, luv, you want another pint? Is that it? I’ll get you one, no need to take yourself elsewhere, we’ll just—”

“No, that is _not_ it, and I’m perfectly capable of asking for a pint when I want one. You—” John stutters, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “You called me ‘honey’, and then you _licked_ me.”

“So? You’re sweet; where’s the harm in a man showing you when he’s noticed? And don’t try to say you didn’t want it. Ever since I sat down you’ve been coming on to me—”

“Answering ‘yeah, I saw the match last week’ when you asked me does not mean ‘please lick my neck, you big stud, I’m gagging for it’, I’ve got news for you,” says John. He’s shrugging into his coat and digging out the requisite notes from his wallet to cover his tab. The barman raises his eyebrows at him –a Beta, he doesn’t want to get caught in the middle of whatever dance these two patrons are performing—but John glowers and slaps the money on the counter so forcefully that the barman opts to appease him instead of the Alpha who is clearly still a bit behind in the uptake.

“Listen, you little tease,” the Alpha says as John wipes at his neck with the sleeve of his coat before struggling half-drunkenly with the zip. “You can’t just go around presenting yourself like that and then get pissed off when a perfectly red-blooded Alpha responds the way an Alpha should. You bring it on yourself, you do, and you bloody well know it.”

John folds his arms in front of his chest. “Oh, do I? And how exactly am I _presenting_ myself? Did I get on my hands and knees and waggle my arse in your face? I don’t seem to recall.”

“You know what you did.” The Alpha is flushed and sputtering now. He waves a hand up and down to indicate that all of John is somehow culpable. “This. You. All –smiling like—and that little—” the hand makes a sideways gesture at the level of John’s ribs, presumably at the dark blue cardigan that smartly skims the doctor’s trim frame. It is cashmere; John allowed Sherlock to buy it for him after one of his older cardigans disintegrated in an experiment the purpose of which Sherlock shamelessly failed to explain to John’s satisfaction. John will never admit it aloud, but the new cardigan has quickly become one of his favorites. He wears it for comfort as much as for the fact that it does actually fit him quite well.

The Alpha’s eyes have darkened and his teeth gleam in the dimness of the bar. “You can play innocent and dumb all you want,” he says, “but you’re old enough to know that if you don’t want the attention, you don’t come to a bar alone looking so—”

John can see it; can see the word forming in the man’s mouth. The hands under his folded arms clench into fists.

“Don’t say it,” he warns.

The Alpha says it.

* * *

 

“ _Cute!_ ” John shouts as he sweeps through the doorway to their sitting room.

Sherlock, ensconced in his armchair with his fingers steepled under his nose, looks up from his contemplation. He raises one eyebrow.

“John,” he says blandly. “Match over so soon?”

“What? No, it’s only” –John looks at his watch—“Sherlock, football matches are –oh, never mind. No, I had to _leave_ , because some Alpha took it into his big thick head that a bit of polite conversation meant I was up for it.”

“And just how did he express this obvious misapprehension?”

“He _licked_ me,” says John, once again scrubbing at his neck with the sleeve of his coat. Sherlock’s other eyebrow joins the first.

“That’s hardly polite.”

“I didn’t think so. Nor was it called for or encouraged in the least; though if you asked him he’d say I was leading him on the whole time. Highly provocative banter involving the relative merits of the opposing teams’ midfielders and possible macular degeneration in one or two of the referees. Were you aware that this apparently translates to ‘oh please, sir, take me home and impale me on your giant Alpha cock?’ Because I hadn’t gotten the memo.”

“There’s no need to be vulgar.”

“Yes, there bloody well is, when I can’t even have a few pints and watch a match without some great drooling brute sniffing my neck and calling me—”

“—cute,” Sherlock finishes for him.

“Oh, not you too.”

The detective rolls his eyes. “You were shouting it when you came in. I had wondered what that was about. He did call you ‘cute’, I presume?”

“He did –among other things.” John finally divests himself of his coat and tosses it over one of the kitchen chairs on his way to the kettle. “But it’s the ‘cute’ that really gets up my nose, d’you know what I mean?” He shouts over the noise of the tap as he fetches mugs and tea bags and sets the water on to boil. “I can’t get away from it. Bloody Alphas,” he fumes, returning to knock his head against the sliding door between kitchen and sitting room. “What exactly is it about me that they all think is so cute? _You_ don’t call me cute, or ‘honey’, or ‘sugarplum’, or anything revolting like that.”

“Good god, I should think not. People actually call you ‘sugarplum’?”

“That one’s usually female Alphas over the age of, say, fifty. But it’s happened.”

“John, that is appalling, and unforgivable, and I apologize most sincerely on behalf of my entire gender. I had no idea.”

John chuckles. “No need for you to apologize; you’re one of the few Alphas I know who are completely innocent of such crimes. I’ve never thanked you for that, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For not treating me the way a typical Alpha treats me. For speaking to me as you would speak to anyone else in your life.”

“I don’t speak to you the same way I speak to Mycroft, or Anderson, or—”

“Of course not, but how you treat me is based on your impartial assessment of _me_. John Watson. Not ‘unbonded male Omega, late thirties, still got a litter or two in him, pretty good nick despite the shoulder and inexplicably _cute_.’”

“Ah. Well. You’re welcome, though I hardly feel as though I deserve thanks for _not_ being a philistine.”

John looks at the genuinely bemused expression on Sherlock’s face and laughs for the first time since the big blond Alpha had sat next to him at the bar and flared his nostrils in the direction of John’s collarbones.

“Well, if you truly wish to make amends,” he says, “Perhaps you can help me stop it happening.”

Sherlock frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“Look, you know all about physical cues, postures, inflections and all that. You study it in suspects and witnesses, use them to impersonate different types of people; you’re a master.”

“You could study it too, John; it’s all on my website.”

John waves a hand. “I don’t have the patience for that. Besides, why use the website when I can go to the source?” He smiles. “No, I need you to tell me what I’m doing that makes Alphas call me ‘cute’ and think they can lick me while I’m trying to watch a match.”

“You just said you weren’t doing anything.”

“Not _consciously_ , no; but you’ll be able to tell me what I’m doing unconsciously, won’t you? There has to be _something_ ; this kind of thing has happened to me for years, almost since I presented. That’s not just one outfit I wore or aftershave I used, or a single thing I may or may not have said, or even one stupid Alpha who couldn’t read a signal if it was written on my forehead in glitter paint. This is a _pattern_ , and I need you to help me break it.”

“Why the sudden urgency?”

“Because I’m fucking sick of it! Sherlock, I’m nearly forty. One of these days I might actually like to—” he stutters, unable to explain the flush that he knows has come over him. Sherlock blinks in surprise.

“Mate? Bond? Have _children_?”

John sighs. “I don’t know,” he says truthfully, rubbing a hand over his face. “Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, I’m happy enough with the Betas I date—”

“No, you’re not.”

John opens his mouth to protest, but then gives it up. “Well, maybe if you help me I could attract the type of Beta that _would_ make me happy, all right?”

“No Beta can make you truly happy as a romantic partner, John; it’s just biology.”

John gapes at him. Sherlock is typing something on his mobile, only half-participating in the conversation.

“Incomprehensible bloody arrogance,” says John, fuming. “That, Sherlock? That is why I _don’t_ date Alphas. That is why I have Beta sex with Beta women and enjoy perfectly pleasant Beta relationships—”

“—which never work, and which always end amicably because both parties knew it couldn’t possibly last, so there’s nothing of note to mourn.” He rests the phone back on the arm of the chair and looks steadily at his flatmate. “It’s not arrogance, John; it’s the way your body functions. As an Omega, your reproductive system is constructed in such a way that you experience certain sexual urges only an Alpha can satisfy. You can deny it, keep on trying with your Betas and then whinging when it doesn’t amount to anything, but you won’t solve your problem that way and I’m pretty sure you know that.” He waits for John to respond, but John can do nothing except blink with his mouth hanging open.

“I’m not gloating, John,” says Sherlock. “I truly wish that I could tell you differently. I certainly don’t know of any Alphas with whom _I_ would choose to bond, if I were so inclined.” John huffs a dry, humorless laugh. “Besides,” Sherlock continues, “if anyone would champion your cause in fighting biology, it would be me. I would be only too happy to be able to convince _my_ body that it can function entirely without food or sleep—”

“You do, in fact, try to convince it of both those things daily.”

“Indeed; and as you have observed my efforts, then you will also observe that they inevitably _fail_. Because even without annoying ex-army doctor flatmates enforcing the issue, my body knows what it needs and it _will_ break down eventually unless those needs are met –and there is nothing that I can do to change it.”

The kettle announces the water’s readiness to be turned into tea; John slips back into the kitchen and returns with two mugs, fragrant and steaming. Sherlock takes his from John’s hand and inhales.

“Well, ta very much for the words of frustration and doom, Sherlock,” resumes John with a wry face, “but that’s not actually what I was asking of you. Can you help me or not?”

“What, with the Case of the Unwelcome Adjective? Yes, I think so.”

“You don’t have anything on right now, do you?”

“Something came up just this evening, while you were out,” says Sherlock, “but it’s a slow case. Lots of observation and study over time, research – _legwork_.” The two men share a smirk as Sherlock raises his mug to his lips. “I can easily do both at once,” he says, and then his mobile rings. He looks at it on the arm of the chair, frowns, and answers it.

“Lestrade,” he says. “You have the list?”

Lestrade’s voice comes as an electronic mutter against Sherlock’s ear.

“No! I _told_ you, she didn’t do it! What on earth did you arrest her for?”

More grumbling from Sherlock’s phone, a bit louder. The detective heaves a bitter sigh.

“Never mind. You’re still at the crime scene? Meet us there.” He disconnects with a flourish. “Come along, John. We have Scotland Yard to rescue from themselves.”

* * *

 

“So, what’s the case?” asks John in the taxi.

“Murder. Male Alpha, 54, stabbed to death in his flat. No sign of forced entry. There was an Omega with him, found at the scene. She was the one who called the police.”

“And she’s the one they’ve arrested?”

“Stupid,” huffs Sherlock, nostrils flaring in disgust at Scotland Yard’s incompetence. John suspects that Sherlock particularly wishes for a cigarette at these moments, to add the drama of twin streams of forcefully expelled smoke to his words. As it is, the detective must dial his voice to Extra Scathing in order to compensate.

John knows he’s setting himself up for a Look, but sometimes he can’t resist.

“She didn’t do it?” he asks innocently.

And there it is. The Holmes “I refuse to dignify that fatuous utterance with a verbal response” Look, number five. Style: Sherlock. (Also available in Mycroft and, presumably, Mummy.) Patent pending. John chuckles to himself as the taxi pulls to a stop outside a modestly posh block of flats and Sherlock sweeps out, leaving John to pay the fare.

Donovan greets him with her usual baffled sneer, as though she is honestly (and unpleasantly) surprised every time she spots him in Sherlock’s wake. She shrugs and leads him into the victim’s flat, where Sherlock is ordering the medics to unzip the body bag so that his “assistant” can have a look.

The detective and the DI are in the midst of an argument.

“Well, you’ve arrested the one person besides me who might actually be able to _help_ you in this investigation; I should think you’d be a bit more grateful that I agreed to come by a second time.”

“‘Agreed’ implies I actually asked you here a second time, Sherlock.”

“Boys,” John interrupts them.

“Hello, John,” says Lestrade amiably. “Thought it was your night off.”

“Don’t even ask.”

“John,” says Sherlock, dismissing Lestrade with a swish of coat as he turns to the doctor. “What do you notice about the dead man?”

“Um,” says John, and approaches the medics who have the corpse on the gurney and ready to roll. “May I?” he asks Lestrade.

“Oh, the more the merrier,” gripes Lestrade with a roll of his eyes. The DI’s mouth does twitch up at one corner and his glare soften a bit when John gives him a nod of thanks.

“Multiple stab wounds, obviously,” says John after examining the body. “Both pre- and post-mortem. Applied with some force, and a bit of rage, I’d say. This is an Omega woman you’ve arrested?”

“Smaller than you,” answers Sherlock pointedly, “26 years old, no military history, works at a café in Soho –and she’s unbonded.”

“Oh, but then she couldn’t have—” John shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it, Sherlock?”

Lestrade shrugs. “The victim was an unbonded Alpha, a bit older than the suspect, obviously, but powerful,” he says. “She could very well have taken an interest and let him bring her home, then changed her mind; or maybe he got too forward when she wasn’t ready. Panic will give even a relatively weak person unusual strength in a crisis. You both know that.”

“Yes, but what _you_ have failed to observe is that these knife-strokes were not made by someone who was panicking. There are no wild misses, no jagged edges; every wound was calculated for maximum effect. Your killer was _angry_ , but not panicked. Also, this Alpha was not unbonded. Or at least, not entirely.”

“What? Sherlock, I can _smell_ him all over this flat and I’m a Beta. Surely you—”

Sherlock turns his back again. “John?”

“He’s right, Greg,” says John. “This man _was_ bonded at one time, but then the bond was broken. Divorced?”

“Widowed,” says Sherlock with a grin. “Photos of the two of them in prominent places around the flat. Mantelpiece, over the fire; nightstand by his bed, and so forth and so on. Regularly dusted, regularly handled. He misses her. Obvious.”

John rolls his eyes. “I’ll take your word for it. The point is, the fact that he’s widowed makes it even less likely that your suspect would have panicked enough to do this.”

“How’s that?”

“Because John is an _Omega_ ,” snarls Sherlock, “and he knows the difference.”

“I’m well aware of John’s gender, Sherlock,” says Lestrade with a glance at the doctor. Sherlock’s eyes narrow at them both. “John,” asks Lestrade quietly. “Explain, if you please?”

John sighs. “A man like this –Alpha, powerful, mature, obviously well-off—if he was truly unbonded, as in never bonded at all –well, he’d be extremely attractive to an unbonded Omega who was into that sort of thing, especially if that Omega was looking to bond. But also potentially dangerous. You wouldn’t know why they _hadn’t_ bonded by that age; they could be incapable of forming those kinds of attachments, or have some repressed tendencies on which they daren’t act, or—”

“So what you’re saying is that that Alpha could well be a psychopath,” interjects a smirking Donovan. “In other words, a _freak_.”

“Or they could just be _completely uninterested_ ,” says John sharply. Donovan stiffens, but Sherlock sees her blink twice and take a slightly deeper breath as she meets John’s eyes and takes in the firm set of his jaw.

“ _Anyway_ ,” continues John, “as attractive as such an Alpha might be, he’d still make even me a bit nervous –at least, until I got to know him better.” Another glare at the sergeant. “And especially at certain points in my heat cycle. If it was time for one of my heats, I wouldn’t volunteer to be alone with this guy unless I knew I wouldn’t mind if he decided to jump me. Or unless I was prepared to face assault charges when I defended myself,” he adds with an artless smile that both Donovan and Lestrade return without thinking.

“But if he _had_ been bonded once, even if the bond had been broken, you wouldn’t feel that sense of danger in his presence, would you?” Sherlock prompts him.

“Mm? Oh, no, not at all,” answers John. “No, the fact that he had bonded in the past means that he was both willing and capable; the fact that he was widowed means that the bond was severed without his consent. He wasn’t without a bondmate on purpose. It makes a big difference.”

“You would have felt safe to be alone with him.”

“Well, as a rule, yes. I mean, there are always exceptions. Just as not all truly unbonded Alphas of a certain age are necessarily psychopaths” –Sherlock pretends not to notice John’s sharp sidelong glance at Donovan, but Lestrade ducks his head and chuckles silently behind his hand— “neither should all widowed Alphas be dismissed as harmless. But it would take a real act of aggression to work your suspect up to doing this. Were there any wounds or marks on her when you found her?”

“None,” says Sherlock with a smile for his assistant.

“And they hadn’t known each other long, had they?”

“Not long enough for either of them to build up the kind of resentment that would have prompted a deliberate attack of this degree of ruthlessness.”

“Then I’m sorry, Greg, but Sherlock’s right. You shouldn’t have arrested her. I can’t see how she could have done it.”

Lestrade puts a hand to his eyes and rubs at the closed lids. “Be that as it may,” he says wearily, “she’s all we’ve got and we’re holding her until we can get some answers. She’s guilty of obstructing a police officer at the very least. Won’t give her name or address, has no ID on her, and refuses to say anything except she was with the victim and another bloke, the two men got into an argument, she hid in the bathroom when the argument got physical, and when all was quiet and she came out again, our Alpha was like this.” He nods at the corpse.

John frowns. “She won’t say who the other bloke was? Or describe him at all –tall, short, old, young, Alpha, Beta or Omega?”

“Nope.”

“Hmm…” John licks his bottom lip thoughtfully, and then looks up at his colleague. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock waves a dismissive hand. “Yes, she’s clearly hiding something but you won’t get it out of her. At least,” he scowls at Lestrade, “not before _I_ solve this murder my own way, if you would stop thinking, do as I ask and _get me that list_.”

The DI remains unflappable. “You’ll have your list tomorrow,” he says, “and much good may it do you. In the meantime, we can hold Miss Anonymous on the obstruction charge for up to a month. But if my nose is right,” he adds wryly, “she’ll go into heat before then, and she won’t want to be in prison for that. Good evening, gentlemen.” He gives a nod each to John and then Sherlock and strides from the flat.

* * *

 

“‘List’?” asks John on the way back to Baker Street.

“The victim was the owner of a small but moderately prosperous commercial laundry and linen service,” Sherlock explains. “The list I asked Lestrade to provide is a list of new clients that the service has acquired over the past three months.”

“Okay,” says John after trying to work out the connection for a moment. “Why?”

Sherlock gives a short, impatient sigh. “Think, John,” he says. “You said it yourself: those stab wounds were vicious and deliberate. Someone hated that man –or at least wanted him dead, and not on the spur of the moment. But you also noted that he seemed a stable, safe, _boring_ sort of man.”

“Hang on a minute, I never—”

“—and you were _right_ , by the way,” continues Sherlock as though John hadn’t spoken. “Good god, the man hadn’t changed so much as a single picture in his flat since before his mate died. No new –whatevers, Omegafriends, Betafriends, renters, anything. No new hobbies, no bad habits, no unfortunate life choices even in the mourning period. He was on a heart-healthy diet. Took a moderate walk every day and a single glass of red wine in the evening while relaxing with a light comedy or one of those ‘action’ films in which nobody bleeds. Everything about him for _years_ has been just like this. Safe. Stable. _Dull_.”

“That, Sherlock, is what most people would call ‘normal’ for someone of his age.”

Sherlock looks at John across the back seat of the taxi and smirks. “I heard those inverted commas, John, and I hope that _you_ have come to terms with living outside of what most people would consider ‘normal’.”

“I come to terms with it every day, Mr. Holmes.” If John’s grin is any indication, he doesn’t much mind. “So –the business, then? The new contracts?”

“Ah, yes; the laundry and linen service was the _only_ part of that man’s life that had undergone any significant change in years. That _must_ be the key, the reason for someone to want to kill him _now_ , as opposed to any other time.”

“I hadn’t realized that commercial laundry services was such a cut-throat industry.”

Sherlock allows himself a slight grimace at the pun, but soldiers on. “Not –usually, no; but it’s a more lucrative business than you might be aware of. Think of all the hotels in London, all the restaurants, convention centers, gyms, spas, salons: any business that requires bed linens, towels, table linens, uniforms—”

“I get it. It’s a lot of laundry.”

“Potentially, yes. And there were a few larger, well-known firms that handled most of it for the bigger clients, and still do; but, the recent downturn in the economy has forced some of those establishments to cut corners.”

“Including, possibly, hiring a smaller and less expensive company to service their laundry needs.”

“That’s the hypothesis.”

“You really think one of the bigger companies sent someone to kill this man because he’d siphoned a hotel or two off their client roster?”

“In terms of raw cash, won and lost –well, people have killed for less. But as a business measure, it _is_ a little unorthodox, not to mention carrying a high degree of risk for what seems a doubtful reward. So what was special about this man, or about these particular clients?”

“I guess it depends on who those clients are,” says John, and takes a sharp breath. “Oh, so that’s why –yes, I see. The list,” he says, as Sherlock heaves a sigh of infinite patience at last rewarded. He doesn’t look at John –his eyes are watching London slide by outside the taxi’s windows—but that private, pleased smile of his is visible all the same.

“Knew you’d get there eventually.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a normal day in the life of John Watson. Sherlock makes sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Huge thanks to all who have read, commented, kudo'ed, bookmarked and subscribed. Your response to my little Omegaverse fic has been so encouraging! And I apologize that the update was delayed for so long. RL work, family and health situations have thrown me a number of obstacles over the last few weeks, so it's been tough to find the time or the energy to update as quickly as I'd like. I fully intend to increase the pace for the upcoming chapters.
> 
> You may also notice that I'm no longer posting this as a four-chapter work. It's grown at least an extra 2 chapters, partially because I've decided to post shorter chapters more frequently for this work instead of my usual 10,000-word behemoths, but mostly because I just can't get John and Sherlock to stop talking. So I actually can't say for sure how many chapters this thing will be, but I hope you enjoy all of them!
> 
> I should also note that my usual Beta is on vacation right now, so this chapter is completely un-Betaed and un-Britpicked. Though everything I write is un-Britpicked, actually. Brits, if you have anything to pick, please feel free. I don't bite.

* * *

The following afternoon, John is breezing through his shift at the surgery. It’s mundane stuff as always, but this is turning out to be one of the days on which mundane works. His patients and their needs and complaints are varied enough and not too painfully dull. No one tries to get him to prescribe anything they don’t need or accuses him of diagnosing them with things they don’t have. The children he sees are all well-behaved and so are their parents. Not once does he find himself unexpectedly wearing someone else’s bodily fluids.

He escorts his latest patient to the reception desk wearing a lopsided and somewhat cheeky smile. The patient had come in nervous and embarrassed about a rash she’d suddenly developed and couldn’t explain, but emerges from John’s examination room in huffs of relieved laughter. The culprit in this case is a plant her daughter had brought home from school as a science project.

“Allergic contact dermatitis,” John tells Trudy the receptionist with a tip of his head and a wink. He scribbles his signature on a prescription for steroid cream and flourishes it off the pad just as Sarah exits her office on her way to a cup of tea from the lounge. John’s patient takes the prescription from him with a curtsey and a bubble of laughter.

“Tell your daughter I wish her luck,” says John.

“Oh, that child,” sighs his patient. “I suppose I’m lucky it’s just plants this time; I don’t think she’ll be happy until she’s blown us all to bits with one of her projects.”

John can’t help the added warmth that infuses his smile now, or the chuckle that follows. “I know the feeling.”

He’s just round the corner on the way back to his office when he hears his patient –Trainor, John thinks; the woman’s name is Mrs. Trainor, and her daughter (the budding scientist, who her mum thinks will present as an Alpha when the time comes) is Julia— pulling the other two women into a not-very-subtle “private” chat.

“…the same one who writes that blog, you know, on the Internet? About himself and that detective with the funny name and the hat?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” Sarah answers with only a trace of tightness in her voice, bless her.

“I knew it,” exclaims Mrs. Trainor, who clearly thinks she’s still keeping her voice down. “I recognized him from the photos, though they hardly do him justice. He looks just _ordinary_ on his blog, and anyway he’s always in the background, behind that other fellow. But in person…” the woman’s voice trails off.

John can hear Sarah’s fond expression. “Dr. Watson can be quite the charmer.”

His patient giggles like a twenty-something out with her girlfriends.

“He is rather disarmingly sweet,” she confesses. “Though completely professional, of course,” she amends in a hurry.

“Of course,” says Sarah.

“But I was stunned to discover that he’s an Omega!” continues Mrs. Trainor in a not-at-all whisper that John can hear clearly from his lurking position in the corridor. “I mean, not because he’s a doctor, but –that blog he writes. Those things he and that detective get up to –they sound _dangerous_. And they’re all true? You don’t think he exaggerates a bit, just to keep his fans entertained?”

Sarah can’t help a tiny little snort before she replies. “I know for a fact that if anything, John downplays a lot of the things he gets up to with Sherlock Holmes.”

“But—” the patient sounds actually distressed now. “But Holmes is an Alpha, isn’t he? He shouldn’t allow someone like John –Dr. Watson, I mean—into those kinds of situations. He’s supposed to protect Omegas, not expose them to danger like that!”

Sarah’s voice is calm and measured, but firm. “Dr. Watson _was_ a soldier, you know. In fact, he does a lot of the protecting in their little adventures. God knows, Sherlock Holmes needs defending on most days; and very often, John Watson is the only one to do it.”

John bites back a wry smile at this. Yes, there was some bitterness in the last part of that speech, but respect as well –and some for Sherlock too, he thinks, whom Sarah has at least admitted _deserves_ defending, even if she’s not offering her services.

“Well it’s not right,” says Mrs. Trainor indignantly. “Maybe he was a soldier, but I bet the Alphas in his company knew better than to put that sweet little Omega on the front lines where he could get _hurt_.” She sniffs. “Well. I hope for his sake that he gets swept off his feet and bonded soon, to someone who’ll _appreciate_ him.”

She takes her leave. John knows he should really stop loitering outside his office and get ready for his next patient, but he stops in the act of collecting himself when he hears Trudy snort.

“‘Swept off his feet.’ Not likely, with His Highness swooping in at all hours to drag poor John away for his convenience.”

Sarah makes a low noise, rueful and sad. “Yes, whoever takes on that particular challenge had better have a Taser gun and a jet pack. And preferably a castle in Romania.”

“Well,” says Trudy thoughtfully, “I don’t think I could manage the castle for you, but I do know a bloke who claims to have a Taser gun though of course he may be lying, and my old dad has a hang-glider left over from his mid-life crisis. Would that do?”

Sarah laughs. “Thanks, but I’m afraid I lack one elemental qualification for the job.”

“But—” John can hear Trudy’s frown. “He likes women, doesn’t he?”

“Oh yes,” says Sarah, “but he _is_ an Omega, and he _is_ sharing a flat with an unbonded Alpha. In such cases, sadly, biology will always win out.”

“ _No_ ,” breathes Trudy. “But John’s always said they weren’t… when did that happen?”

“It hasn’t,” answers Sarah, “and I don’t think it’s likely to. But that doesn’t mean that their living together isn’t an obstacle to John’s forming relationships with other people.” She sighs. “Sherlock is extremely possessive of John’s attention and his time, though clearly it’s not a sexual thing. At least not as far as Sherlock’s concerned. They’re both on suppressants, of course –they wouldn’t last a single heat cycle without mating if they weren’t—but Sherlock doesn’t just suppress his gender. He’s turned himself off to all human consideration.” A huff. “If he was ever open to such trivialities as human emotions in the first place. I do wonder. To him, everything is about his Work –and for some reason, he considers John essential to it; so when the Work calls, Sherlock calls John, and off he goes.” Another wistful sigh. “But John, poor thing, he’s such a sweet agreeable chap and he does like to feel useful, and he admires Sherlock so much and –well, if Sherlock gives him the impression that he’s not just useful but _indispensable_ , and despite all the hormone suppressants and his generally cold disposition he _is_ an Alpha and living with John, then—”

“—then a poor Beta interloper such as yourself hasn’t got a chance?”

“Not a cat’s in hell,” says Sarah. “Worse yet, I don’t think _John_ has a chance. He needs to be out of that environment, out of that flat and away from whatever Alpha pheromones Sherlock’s got lodged in every air particle, sofa cushion and carpet fiber, and allow himself the chance to really look at his life with a clear eye –or a clear nose, to be exact. Then he’ll be able to make the choices that are best for _him_.”

John does not wait to hear what Trudy thinks of Dr. Sawyer’s prescription for his life. He slips back into his office and spends ten minutes breathing deeply (left hand clenching and unclenching without his noticing it) until the fog has cleared from his vision enough that he feels able to call in his next patient.

During the remainder of his shift, he sends several texts to Sherlock, all of which go unanswered.

_Just a reminder: you said you’d help me with my problem even while you’ve got this case on. –J_

_So anytime you’d like to start helping, be my guest. –J_

_Like right now would be fantastic. –J_

_Sherlock. –J_

_Are you being throttled by nameless thugs, or just ignoring me? –J_

_God damn it. -J_

As soon as his shift is over, John heads for the lab at St. Bart’s. There are few reasons for Sherlock not to return a text, the least worrisome of which is that he’s somewhere where his phone gets little or no signal. Only a very few of those places could possibly hold Sherlock’s attention for over two hours.

He only bursts through the lab doors in a very low-key, not-at-all-anxious sort of way. Mike Stamford looks up from his usual spot at one of the lab tables. Sherlock is not in the room. The frustrated noise that John makes causes Mike’s eyebrows to crunch up a bit in the middle.

“Hullo, John,” says Mike. “You look like you’ve had a rough one.”

“Sort of, yeah,” says John. “Speaking of which, has Sherlock been here? I’ve been texting him but no answer.”

“Uh oh. What’s he done now?”

John laughs. “Nothing yet,” he says, “and that’s actually why I’m looking for him. He’s agreed to help me with a –problem I’m having, and I just wanted to –er, remind him of it. Before he gets caught up in something and forgets about me.”

The corner of Mike’s mouth gives a twitch and he gets that expression that John finds so irritating, as if Mike knows something that John doesn’t. Before John can ask about it, his text alert goes off.

_Neither dying nor ignoring you. Phone was on silent. Have not forgotten Project Cute. These things take some effort to construct properly for optimal results. When are you coming home? -SH_

Molly enters the lab as he’s formulating an appropriately indignant response. Automatically her nostrils flare in John’s direction. She does this every time she sees him; John’s guess is that she’s checking for the scent of Sherlock –or rather, the scent of a bond between John and the Alpha Molly not-so-secretly covets. He doubts she even consciously knows that she does it.

There is nothing to smell, of course, and Molly’s demeanor relaxes and brightens.

“Oh, hello, John!” she greets him sunnily, as if she’s only just spotted him. “I was just about to ring you. Mike and I were going out for drinks in a bit and were wondering if you’d like to come too.”

“You and –you and Mike? But I thought—”

“Not like that, silly, no; Mike’s still with his lovely Evelyn of course. No, just drinkies between friends. Thought it would be fun to have a night out. Sherlock said he might come.”  _Ah_ , thinks John. It figures that Molly would have asked Sherlock first. A slightly more cynical part of him suspects that Molly has calculated the (admittedly dismal) chance of Sherlock actually turning up to be slightly higher if John was going too.

_Apparently, I’m having drinks with some of the Bart’s crowd. According to Molly, so are you. –J_

_Tell Molly that I will make every effort within reason to join your little outing. –SH_

John can’t help snickering to himself.

_Right. I think I’ll let her get a drink or two into herself before I break that news. See you at home. -J_

Mike’s car brings them to a pub a fair enough distance away from Bart’s to avoid bumping into too many of Dr. Stamford’s “bright young things”. The place is noisy and dim and full of a bunged-in mix of ages, genders, professions and predilections. John can never decide if Sherlock would find such a place tedious, overwhelming, or a smorgasbord of deductive possibilities. Of course, he’s never managed to get Sherlock to actually set foot in such a place, so he’ll probably never know. Which is just as well, he thinks. Far too great a potential for seriously Not-Good things to happen, possibly ending in Mycroft having to send some of his minions to “sterilize” the bar or have everyone’s memories erased or something.

They talk of Bart’s-related matters for the first round –mostly Molly and Stamford shedding the remnants of their day—but as Mike slides John’s second pint across from him and settles back in his seat, he fixes his old friend with a look of amusement.

“So,” he says, “Sherlock isn’t the cause of your distress, then. At least not today.” John snorts. “Then why were you looking for him?”

John sighs and shuffles the hand not holding his pint through his hair. It’s difficult to explain his problem without sounding like a narcissistic prat, he knows. He starts with the unsolicited licking from last night, figuring to draw on some sympathy, and goes from there.

Mike’s reaction is predictable. “Oh, poor Watson,” he says, chuckling. “‘Oh, help me, all the Alphas think I’m cute and want to take me home, boo hoo.’ Yeah, your life’s tough, mate, I’m so sorry.”

“Piss off,” John fires back without any real invective. “I’m aware that I sound like a whiny tosser, all right? It doesn’t make the situation any less annoying.”

“Well, you didn’t use to think it was annoying,” Mike answers. “You were called ‘cute’ by just about everyone in our uni days, as well, but it didn’t seem to bother you then. In fact, I remember you actually inviting more than one Alpha –and a few Betas—to lick you. And in more places than just your neck.” He winks.

John gives him half a smile, but shakes his head. “No, I’ve always thought it was annoying,” he says. “It’s just that at uni, I was more interested in getting laid than cultivating ‘mature relationships’ with potential partners. It’s not like I was going to see any of those people again. Even if I thought I might, as soon as they started in with the ‘cute’ business I went off ‘em. Or at least, I knew what they were good for and no more.”

“But,” says Molly, and she looks genuinely distressed. “I don’t understand. Why punish someone for telling you they like the way you look?”

John scrubs a hand over his face. “It’s not that I mind being thought attractive, or having people say nice things about my appearance,” he says. “And trust me, not everyone likes the way I look. Or anywhere near.”

“That Alpha girl from our biology lab,” Stamford offers.

“Oh, god, she was frighteningly gorgeous,” says John with a sigh. “And wouldn’t give me the time of day,” he informs Molly.

“That Beta fellow from your rugby club…”

“Yes, thank you, Mike,” John snaps, but he’s smiling. “I think she gets the point. It’s not even the _word_ ‘cute’ that bothers me, really. It’s what I know they mean when they say it.” His fingers curl at his temples as if he’s grappling with his brain for the right words. “‘Cute’ means I get treated like a little doll,” he says at last. “Alphas who say it think of me as a fucktoy, possibly a brood-mare, and nothing more. I’m not taken seriously; I’m thought of as fragile and delicate and _snuggly_ and _precious_ and… Even the Betas who call me ‘cute’ talk down to me, in their own way. They coddle me, try to dress me up in adorable _outfits_ , pinch my cheeks like doting aunts. I can’t stand it.”

“Well, I think you’re being horribly unfair,” bursts out Molly. “To them, and to other Omegas who might not be quite as –fortunate as you are to be liked by so many people.”

“Molly,” says John, bewildered. “I don’t understand how my personal feelings on being called ‘cute’ is somehow meant to be an insult to you, or any other Omega. It’s got nothing to do with you. And people who treat me like a limpid little flower obviously don’t know me at all, so how can you say they like _me_?”

“But they want to get to know you _better_ ; that’s the point,” says Molly. “And you get to pick and choose who you allow to do that. You shouldn’t complain –not when there are Omegas around who can’t get an Alpha to give them a second look unless they go for a stroll in the park a couple of days from their heat and say ‘yes’ to the first one who latches on. It’s not just unfair, it’s _ungrateful_.”

John alternates between gaping like a fish and fighting back words for which he would kick Sherlock in the shins, if Sherlock ever said them. He settles for escaping to the loo, where he paces the floor a dozen times or so and splashes cold water over his face. When he returns to their table, Stamford is obviously still trying to coax Molly out of her fit of pique.

“It just means that he wants something different than you do, Molls,” says Mike. “No one’s saying that one of you’s right and the other is wrong.”

“I just –it’s so unlike John,” answers Molly with a sniffle. “He’s so nice, always… I can’t believe he’d just sit there and _rub it in_ like that.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” says John, reaches across the table to grab his jacket, and storms out.

* * *

The rant that’s percolating in John’s throat as he crosses the threshold of 221B dies abruptly as he’s confronted with the spectacle of Sherlock Holmes removing his eyebrows.

A second glance clarifies things –in a way; what Sherlock is actually doing is _exposing_ his eyebrows by removing the false ones he’d had plastered over them. He also appears to have grown six weeks’ worth of facial hair since that morning. Upon seeing John, he frowns and flicks the sleeve of his dressing gown over his wrist to look at his watch.

“Hmm,” he says. “You’re early. In future, I must take into account that your ‘brisk’ walking pace is considerably more brisk than when we first moved in together.”

John blinks at his flatmate. “You knew I’d be walking home around this time," he says. "That I’d get into a spat at the pub and decide to leave early, and that I’d choose to walk rather than taking a taxi or the Tube.”

Sherlock sends an amused-sounding puff of air through his nose. “I’m flattered by your persistent belief in my clairvoyance, John, but no. I saw you leave, and marked your direction and mode of travel.”

“You saw—” John checks, considers, points at the false whiskers. “You were there," he says, "at the pub. In disguise.”

“Succinctly put. Yes. You were shockingly unobservant as usual not to spot me, but tonight that actually worked to our advantage.”

“How so? Why couldn’t you just come over and join us? If you saw me leave, you must have heard the argument that caused it. I could have used your support.”

“Whether or not I could have added anything of substance to your – _thrilling_ discussion,” says Sherlock, attacking the whiskers now, “I couldn’t spoil the scientific process. I had already observed you in the sort of public environment that we frequent together –namely, a crime scene—but I also needed first-hand data from observing you in your other habitual locations. Namely, work and ‘out with friends’. Neither of which situations usually include me. My known presence would have introduced an irregular variable into the equation and possibly skewed the results.”

“Results… This is for the thing? What we talked about? Our project?”

“I did say I would help you.”

“You could have told me you’d already started.”

“No, John, I couldn’t have. Really, did you not conduct _any_ experiments in the course of becoming a doctor?” He shakes his head as if despairing of the entire British educational system. “Today was the control day, John. Day Zero, if you will. Observe the subject in its natural state. If you’d known you were being observed, you would have been self-conscious and acted differently than you usually do, which would—”

“—have skewed the results,” John finishes for him. “Well, what now? I only lasted a round and a half at the pub; surely you need a little more to work with than that? Except now you’ve told me I’m being observed. Doesn’t that muck up any future control data?”

“It would, if I planned to collect any. We’re fine though; I got everything I needed.” Sherlock buffs off the last of the whiskers and crowds all four of his limbs into his armchair. The detective’s face is his own again, if somewhat pinker than normal from the removal of his disguise.

“Molly certainly had an interesting point of view regarding your problem,” he continues, one eye on John while he taps something into his phone. “Rather different from yours.”

“Frankly, I’m rather disappointed in Molly Hooper. I don’t think anyone should believe that even unwanted attention is better than no attention at all. Not that she doesn’t get _some_ attention, because she does, it’s just—” he stutters, stops, and then shrugs. “I have no idea. And then to make me feel _guilty_ about not wanting to be thought of as a cute little Omega in need of a big shining Alpha knight…” he shakes his head, bewildered.

“It does remind me of the argument stereotypically posed to children, that one must eat something one detests because strangers of a similar age in a remote part of the globe lack the same opportunity.”

John ponders that for a moment and then laughs. “Oh right: ‘Eat your carrots because there are children starving in Africa’, or wherever. Yeah, it is like that a bit. Your Mum actually tried that with you and Mycroft?”

“Please, John, don’t be silly. Our mother knew better than that.” Sherlock sniffs. “No, it was a nanny –and it was Brussels sprouts, not carrots.”

“Brussels sprouts.”

“Yes; odious things, have you never eaten them? Taste of feet. I wouldn’t wish them on any child, no matter where they lived or under what conditions they subsisted.”

John laughs again. Sherlock gets that mildly stunned look on his face that he wears when he succeeds in making John laugh without knowing why.

“I have eaten them, in fact,” says John, “and I hear that given the right preparation, they can actually be quite… well, that’s what I hear, anyway. So I take it this nanny was unsuccessful in appealing to your sense of privilege guilt?”

Sherlock frowns. “My what?” he says, and shakes his head irritably. “No. She –she didn’t last very long.”

“I’ll bet she didn’t,” says John, still chuckling. “Well, good on you, I suppose.”

“Yes, well. Mycroft did –help, in his own way.”

John stops laughing abruptly. “Oh god. I’ve sometimes tried to imagine what a true Holmes brothers’ collaboration might look like.”

“Hmm,” says Sherlock thoughtfully. “Best not, I think.”

“Yeah… no,” John answers. “No, best not.”

Sherlock is still typing into his phone.

“That’s one long text,” says John wearing his innocent face. Sherlock lays the phone on the arm of his chair and sighs.

“It’s not a text, obviously,” he answers with a sneer. “I’ve downloaded a program onto my phone which allows me to use it as a cloud-based journal for my cases and other experiments. It has two benefits: one, that I can install the same program on my laptop, each of which then syncs with the other over the Internet at regular intervals, meaning I have all my notes to hand, automatically updated, at either location.”

“Neat,” says John. “I think. And the second benefit?”

“Camouflage,” says Sherlock archly. “People get nervous when they see a man observing them and taking handwritten notes in a journal. With this tool, the average idiot will just think I’m sending an inordinately long text.” He offers John a plastic smile, which John sends right back.

“Those are your notes on me from today?” he asks, trying to peer through Sherlock’s fingers.

“Among other things, yes,” says Sherlock, still typing. “And no, you can’t see them. Not until the project is finished. Anything you learn about my observations or my method or my plans for the upcoming days could affect your behavior and—”

“—skew the—yes, all right,” says John with a roll of his eyes. “I guess I should be grateful you’re taking this so seriously. I am, in fact. Thank you.” Sherlock’s eyes are still on his phone and John can only see the top half of his head, but he does observe Sherlock’s slight nod of acknowledgment and the (no doubt unconscious) slight lowering of his eyelids as he absorbs his friend’s appreciation. John smiles, and then suddenly frowns as something occurs to him.

“Hang on,” he says. “You said ‘work’, that you’d observed me at work. How…?”

Sherlock smiles, this time for real. “Wondered when you’d ask. Contractor, looking at your air ducts. You should look into hiring a real one soon; the ventilation in that surgery is terrible. Though the acoustics, I admit, were more than satisfactory.”

“I—” John remembers a fellow in coveralls who had his head and upper body stuck in various parts of the surgery’s drop ceiling for most of the day. “I was walking around you and that stupid ladder for hours,” he sputters. “That was you?”

“Mm. Fortunately I got a signal in many of the rooms, even from the ceiling, so I wasn’t too bored. And some of your patients were, I admit, at least somewhat interesting. Though I doubt that Julia Trainor will actually present as an Alpha as her mother believes. There are, as you’re no doubt aware, unmistakable signs that would have made themselves known by now, and her mother would have been sure to mention them. Julia will most likely turn out a Beta with perhaps some Alpha tendencies.”

“A ‘top’ Beta,” says John, nodding. “Yes, I thought so too, though you couldn’t convince her mother as such, and it wasn’t really relevant to her skin condition… oh.”

Sherlock looks up from his phone to find John with a red face and chewing his lower lip. “What?”

“Well, if you were there for Mrs. Trainor, then… you heard. What Sarah and Trudy said, just after.”

“Yes,” says Sherlock. “I did.”

“Right.” John takes a long breath. It was bad enough, he thinks, having to hear it himself, but— “Just in case you were wondering,” he says in a tight voice, “I _don’t_ follow you on cases and break dates to answer your text summonses because I’m helpless under your almighty hormonal spell, all right?”

Sherlock blinks at him in confusion. “Of course you don’t, John. You’re a grown man. Perfectly capable of making your own decisions.”

 _And that_ , thinks John, _is why I_ do _follow him. Because it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to believe that of me. Because he would never think otherwise_.

“Well,” says John aloud. “Your holding that opinion puts you in the minority, it seems.”

“John, my being _me_ puts me in the minority,” says Sherlock, closing his program and shutting down his phone with a sigh. “It’s a position with which I am quite comfortable.”

John laughs fondly, and goes to put the kettle on.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A case, John! The game is on and our heroes are --well, they're collecting data. Lots and lots of data. And Captain Watson follows orders like the good soldier he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow... All right, first and foremost THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who as taken the time to read, comment, bookmark and subscribe. I am quite stunned and humbled. Even more so because I can't for the life of me manage to pop out more than one chapter per month, it seems. >_> So I apologize, and I hope very much that you think it's worth it!
> 
> Thanks go out to **Bitenomnom** for providing feedback and handholding and encouragement and stuff, as always.
> 
>  **OMEGAVERSE NOTE:** While certain things, like heat cycles, are generally accepted about this 'verse, there are, as we know, other things that vary widely from fic to fic, like the length of heat cycles and the length of the heats themselves. In my little 'verse, Omegas go into a heat that lasts from 72-96 hours every 60-72 days. Like women and their menstrual cycles, some Omegas have longer, shorter or more irregular heat cycles than the average.
> 
>  **POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING:** oblique(ish) references to rape/non-con.

“You have the next two days off from the surgery, correct?” asks Sherlock as John comes downstairs the next morning.

“That’s right,” says John. Sherlock’s mug sits near his elbow on the sitting room table, empty; John collects it and brings it with him to the kitchen for a refill.

“Don’t take any last-minute shifts,” calls out Sherlock over the noise of John filling the kettle. “You’re busy.”

“What, with the project? Two whole days? Am I going to be locked up in some sort of lab?”

Sherlock snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous, John. Yes, I do have plans for our project, of course; but I hope you haven’t forgotten that we do actually have a case on. The dead Alpha with the laundry business?”

“Oh yeah, I mean, of course.” John coughs guiltily. “Er, what was his name?”

“Vaughan. Albert Vaughan. We’ll be visiting his business and interviewing some of his recently acquired clients over the next two days.”

“Right. Lestrade finally came through with that list then?”

“He emailed it to me yesterday afternoon.”

John frowns. “Then why didn’t you follow up on it right away?”

“Well, I did have my head stuck in a drop ceiling at the time, John.”

“But –Sherlock, this is a case! With an actual victim, whose murderer could be getting away right now! Did you honestly think that eavesdropping on my patients and my friends was more important?”

“John, let me remind you that as a consulting detective I choose to which cases I give my attention, and when, and for how long. Yesterday I had two puzzles on my proverbial plate: why it is that your potential partners view and treat you in a certain way, and who killed Albert Vaughan. For your problem, I needed a control day for observation and I had a relatively small window of time in which to work because even as oblivious as you are, you _would_ discover that you were being observed eventually. Which you did. Albert Vaughan, on the other hand, was dead yesterday and is still dead today and shall continue to be so for the foreseeable future. So you see—”

“But the killer—”

“—isn’t ‘getting away’, as you put it, because he’s not going anywhere.”

“How can you possibly know that, if you don’t know who he is?”

Sherlock sighs heavily. “John. Through how many variations on this conversation must we suffer before your muddled little brain finally recognizes that they are in fact the _same conversation_?” He scrubs his clawed hands several times across his scalp as if to drive away the itch of John’s stupidity. “Yes, it’s true, you’re absolutely right that I don’t know the name and address of Vaughan’s killer, yet. But that’s far from saying that I know nothing about him. Even you, John, have some crucial data about him on your hard drive… though in your case,” he mutters, “it’s more of a floppy disk…”

“Oi, wanker: Nothing about me is ‘floppy’, all right?”

Sherlock narrows his eyes at him. “Then prove it. What do you already know about our killer?”

John scrunches his lips together and stares at the floor. “He has something to do with the laundry business,” he says finally.

“Not confirmed; not yet, anyway. We are running with that hypothesis, because it seems the most likely to yield results. However likely it is, though, we still have to prove it. But what do we already _know_ , based on the facts?”

John grits his teeth. On the one hand, he finds it really annoying when Sherlock does this, because clearly he already knows the answers and this needling of John’s intellect seems to have no purpose except to waste time and make John feel stupid. On the other, he can’t help but feel a small bloom of warmth –gratitude, perhaps, and even a sort of pride—that Sherlock continues to take the time with him, coaxing meager feats of deduction out of his blogger instead of slamming a metaphorical door in his face as if he was Anderson or someone. It’s this that makes him rub the spot between his eyes and think.

“The stab wounds,” he says. “Deep, vicious, powerful. Not inflicted in a panic or a rage, so the killer has a certain amount of natural strength.” He shuts his eyes, envisions the cuts on the victim’s body. “My initial impression was that the knife was either angled downward or driven straight into the flesh. If the two of them were standing at the time of the attack, the killer would be approximately the same height as the victim or possibly a bit taller.”

“Very good,” says Sherlock with that rare smile of his, and John feels a ridiculous flash of satisfaction at pleasing the detective (and if he’s honest, relief at not having disappointed him). “A reasonable deduction based on what you _saw_. Now, what can you deduce by what you _didn’t_ see?”

“What I didn’t… Sherlock,” says John, “if I didn’t see something, what is there to form an opinion about? I didn’t see a unicorn in the flat; what does _that_ tell you?”

Sherlock seethes; he actually has a seething _noise_ that he makes. “Think, John. Get rid of the clutter and _focus_. A man comes to your door, tall, strong, powerful, and he has a knife. Would you let him in?”

“Of course not. Though most murderers don’t stand at the door with a knife and a threatening look, I’m guessing.”

“Not if they think they can talk their way in, no. But if they can’t—”

“—they’d have to force their way in,” John finishes, “which would leave marks and such on or around the door… which I didn’t see.”

“Because they weren’t there. I had already told you.”

“So the victim let the killer into his flat of his own accord,” says John with a nod. “Then, what, they knew each other?”

“Or if they didn’t, Vaughan felt comfortable letting him in anyway. So the killer must either have been previously acquainted with the victim or else he presented credentials at the door that would have justified Vaughan’s admitting him without a fight. Which means that the killer had a plan; but not just to get in, no. He killed with confidence, even with a witness in the other room –a witness whom he left alive at the scene. ‘Stupid’, you say; but he wasn’t.” Sherlock pauses, tilts his head to consider. “At least not theoretically,” he says. “Time will tell. He didn’t leave that Omega there out of stupidity, though, but in the confidence that she would _help_ him avoid arrest –even to the point of being arrested herself.”

“Wait. You mean she was in on it?”

“Well, she’s clearly protecting him, at quite a cost. So the highest likelihood is that our killer is an Alpha.”

“But you said she’s unbonded.”

“She is, therefore the killer is likely to be unbonded as well. She means to convince this Alpha of her loyalty and desirability as a mate by making a great sacrifice.”

John crosses his arms at his chest and frowns. He can see Sherlock’s reasoning, but he can’t bring himself to like it. “He _has_ to be an Alpha?” he asks. “She couldn’t just be helping out a friend?”

“Please, John. As noble as you are, and as much as you love to play the hero, would _you_ let yourself go to prison for a murder committed by one of your _friends_?”

John thinks about it and reluctantly concedes the point. “Maybe –I don’t know; a family member?” he counters.

Sherlock waves him off. “She has no family,” he says. “At least if she does, she isn’t close enough to them for this kind of a gesture.”

“How do you know?”

“Because no one has posted her bail.”

“Well, the person she’s protecting isn’t likely to stroll in and make himself known. She might only be close to him in their family. That happens sometimes.” But Sherlock shakes his head.

“He could have sent someone else in to post her bail for him, if he’d cared to,” he says. “Think about it, John. She is unbonded, about a week from her heat, and she has just been put in _prison_. If that was your sister, what would you do?”

John scrubs his hand across his mouth. “You met her, that night,” he says. “Is she on suppressants?”

“She smelled of naturally occurring reproductive hormones to me.”

“A free-range bird. Christ.” John winces and covers his eyes. “Okay, so family member isn’t likely,” he agrees. “Which means this Alpha she’s in love with has just left her to whatever happens. What kind of a bastard is this guy?”

“Well, he has also committed a premeditated and rather brutal murder,” says Sherlock. “Clearly, issues of morality are not foremost in his decision-making process. Also, the fact that she is in love with him does not mean that he must return the sentiment.”

John sighs. “Yes, of course you’re right. Poor girl,” he says. “Well. So how does that help us today?”

“Simple. The places we shall be visiting today will be full of people of all genders and sexes, any of whom could be suspect –if we had absolutely nothing to go on.”

“Except we know we’re looking for an Alpha. Unbonded, probably male, but could be a woman if she’s tall and strong enough.”

“Exactly. So get dressed. We’re due at the first stop in an hour.”

When John comes downstairs twenty minutes later, dressed in his “interviewing next of kin/potential suspects” outfit (not too casual, showing respect, but comfortable enough to put people at ease), Sherlock gives him a quick once-over and nods. “Perfect,” he says. “And now, pay attention: these are _your_ instructions for the day.”

“Sorry, what?”

Sherlock extends an arm across the threshold of 221B’s sitting room. “When we step out this door, John,” he says, “we begin Day One of our project. I have the control data on you; now we begin to introduce variables into the equation.” He raises a single pointing finger. His hands at times like these become those of an orchestra conductor. “I will not tell you exactly what I am testing,” he says, “but will simply give you an instruction if I need you to alter your manner or behavior in any way. You are to follow these instructions exactly but otherwise do _not_ deviate from your normal behavior. These kinds of experiments are fraught with error by nature, but we must do our best to keep it to a minimum. Do you understand?”

John quirks his lip. “Yes, sir.”

His flatmate returns the smirk. “Very good, John,” he says. “That’s actually the perfect attitude to take, for my purposes. No matter what provocation or justification you might claim, you are not to pull rank on anyone today –either literally or metaphorically. For today, you have no authority. Other unbonded Omegas share an equal status with you, but that is all. You must act as if everyone else you meet in the course of our activities outranks you.”

John gapes at him. “Wait –hang on,” he manages at last, “are you suggesting that my problem is I’m too authoritative? That’s what you got out of your Day Zero yesterday? Seriously?”

Sherlock blinks twice in rapid succession. “What? No, John, I’m not suggesting anything. Suggesting a solution comes after I’ve collected all of the data. What part of ‘control day’ don’t you understand? I’m still collecting; only now I make very specific adjustments from the conditions and observe any variations that result.”

John rubs the back of his neck and winces. “Okay –I guess,” he says. “So, don’t pull rank. Don’t assume any kind of authority.” He darts a skeptical eye at his flatmate. “Are you sure this isn’t just a ploy to get me to do whatever you want without a fuss?”

Sherlock chuckles. “No, though it is a nice bonus. You will be acting as my assistant, of course, so I will naturally be giving you some orders and you are _not_ to roll your eyes at them as you’re doing now. Also, do not cross your arms, either in front or in back. Don’t swing your arms when you stride –or, well, try not to _stride_ at all, really. And don’t do that thing with your chin.”

“I do a ‘thing’?”

“You do several things, actually, depending on whether you mean to display anger, frustration, determination, defiance, or stubbornness. None of which I want you to display today, and all of which start with you sticking out your chin. You… _bristle_.”

“Well, if certain people weren’t so annoying, I wouldn’t get all bristly.”

“You do so under a number of different circumstances, and not just because of me. But not today,” he adds, pointing an admonishing finger.

“Because you think my chin might be a bit cute.”

Sherlock lowers his brows at John and emits a sigh that confines all ex-army doctors to some particularly tedious corner of Hell. “Now you’re just being obnoxious,” he huffs. “And if I were ever to refer to _anything_ about you –or anyone else, for that matter—as ‘cute’, it would not be that.”

John just laughs. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, waving Sherlock down. “But this is my last chance to be cheeky today, apparently; I couldn’t let it pass.”

In the taxi that Sherlock summons from outside 221B, he shows John the list of clients recently acquired by White Swan Laundry Services, the company owned by the dead Alpha. John purses his lips as he looks it over.

“I don’t see any big names here,” he says to Sherlock. “No major hotels or five-star restaurants, at least none that I recognize. Are some of these like, a front for a big secret highly-lucrative club for the rich and powerful? Should we perhaps ask Mycroft?”

Sherlock’s expression fights between a smirk and a scowl. “I’d never give him the pleasure,” he answers. “However, my suspicions are the same as yours: that unimpressive as this list appears to be, there has to be _something_ about these clients that would cause our unbonded Alpha to do away with Mr. Vaughan. We must go to each location and observe, and we must do it while the laundry service is there as well. Which leaves us a very narrow window of opportunity. Fortunately I was able to obtain their delivery schedule from White Swan’s internal database. Here,” he says abruptly to the taxi driver, who pulls up outside a small, modest-looking hotel in Bloomsbury.

Sherlock flashes one of his ‘confiscated’ Lestrade IDs at the front-desk clerk and declares his intent –since it couldn’t really be called _asking_ —to see the hotel manager. A granite-faced Beta (if granite could sag) who looks to be in her fifties shuffles out and eyes the tall imperious-looking young Alpha and his Omega underling –as John is pretending to be, standing a pace or two behind Sherlock and holding his notebook at the ready.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

Sherlock sweeps in. John can only describe this tactic as a _sweep_ ; it’s not aggressive or heavy-handed enough for a full-on assault, but it’s a swift-moving tide of speech and motion that has its target unmoored and dragged helplessly along before they can register half of what’s happened. In the space of a blink, the hotel manager finds herself being herded back down the hall to her office as Sherlock throws out a distracting fog of small talk about the late Albert Vaughan. “What a shame, respected member of the community, and his business doing so well lately, the best ones always seem to get taken”, etc. ad nauseum. John knows Sherlock’s just spewing back fragments of ‘polite’ (read: boring, pointless) speech he’s picked up from other people; he’d be rolling his eyes at him if he didn’t think that might violate his behavioral directive for the day. In the meantime, John can see Sherlock’s eyes swiftly taking in the staff corridor, the various offices and cupboards and a break room from which a few startled faces peer at them as they pass.

Inside her office, Sherlock grills the hotel manager efficiently about her business (how long in existence, last change of ownership, last major renovations, length of her own employment, number of staff and details thereof) and its connection with Albert Vaughan and White Swan Laundry (start of contract, reason for switching from their previous laundry service, any personal interaction with Mr. Vaughan himself and impressions therefrom.) The hotel manager is a ‘top’ Beta –a Beta with Alpha tendencies—so Sherlock asks the questions and they both appear to ignore John, who sits off to one side, takes notes, and keeps his head either down or trained straight ahead as if he was on parade and waiting for orders. Though he’s sure that Sherlock gleans a wealth of information from this exchange, all John can gather of interest is: that the hotel engaged White Swan because the service they had previously used had gone under; that otherwise very few changes had been made to the hotel business or its staff in quite some time except for the hiring of two or three unbonded Omegas within the past couple of years (though it is technically illegal to refuse hire to an unbonded Omega, many employers conveniently find other reasons to deem them ‘unsuitable’); and that the murder victim made a habit of visiting his clients in person, on foot, on a more or less regular basis.

“Interesting,” murmurs Sherlock as John follows him back out to the lobby. John opens his mouth to point out that Sherlock’s earlier guess as to the reason why these clients might have switched services had been off the mark, but Sherlock makes a sudden show of checking his watch.

“Right on time,” he says, peering out the hotel’s front windows and scanning the street. John’s lips are half-pursed in annoyance before he remembers the project and pulls them back. One corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches. John thinks of where he might hide Sherlock’s box of nicotine patches.

“Go and question the front-desk clerk,” the Alpha smoothly orders his assistant. “I presume you know what to ask.”

The clerk turns out to be one of the unbonded Omegas the manager had referred to, so it makes sense that John would do the talking this round. As he gets closer, he realizes that this Omega is not taking suppressants to prevent his heats, which surprises him. A free-range Omega is usually the last type ever to be able to land a job, and this is an establishment that hadn’t hired _any_ unbonded Omegas until fairly recently.

John doesn’t bother with questions about the state of the hotel business –this man wouldn’t know that kind of information and wouldn’t feel authorized to give it to John if he did. But he was familiar with Albert Vaughan, who often stopped to speak with him on his visits.

“He was a gentleman,” says the clerk, and looks genuinely saddened for the man’s death. “About everything. Even with me being an Omega and all. He didn’t—” here he quickly shuts up and throws a nervous look at Sherlock standing sentinel a few paces away.

Sherlock gives no indication of having heard him, but after another minute or so of friendly chatter between John and the clerk he suddenly fades away. John looks around to see Sherlock’s narrow wool-covered shoulder blades and the flare of his coat as he disappears back down the staff corridor, following – _oh_. The laundry service has arrived; a laughing man in a White Swan uniform is flirting with the female staff member who leads him away to open the service doors from the inside.

Turning back, John notices that the Omega clerk seems much more relaxed now that Sherlock is out of their vicinity. He smiles; Sherlock _is_ a bit much to handle on first sight, and he wouldn’t blame the clerk for experiencing a bit of that ‘never been bonded at his age, what’s wrong with him’ wariness that he had had to explain to Lestrade the other day. Especially if, as was evident by the smell, the Omega in question was nowhere near his heat.

“He’s all right, really,” says John reassuringly, tipping his head back the way Sherlock had gone.

“Sure,” answers the clerk shyly. “I mean, yeah, I guess he must be okay, if you can stand to be around him.”

“You were saying before, how Mr. Vaughan was all right too. A gentleman.”

“He was,” says the clerk emphatically. “He always talked straight to me, even obviously knowing what I am. Polite, yes; but not –well, you know how Alphas can get.”

Because he’s in the company of his equal, John allows himself a huge eye roll and a sigh. “God, do I,” he says. “‘Polite’ as in ‘don’t scare off the ickle Omega with big words and your big, potent self, and you might get a leg over.’” He shakes his head. “Wouldn’t think there was a functioning organ in your body, some of them, except your uterus and your arseh—” John coughs, belatedly curbing his language. The clerk laughs.

“No worries,” he says. “I know what you mean, and it’s _so_ true. The way they can talk down to us sets my teeth on edge, and my skin absolutely _crawls_ when they call me—”

“Oh god,” says John abruptly. “‘Cute’?”

“‘ _Pretty_ ’.”

John can’t form an appropriate verbal response to that; his expression speaks for him. _Well at least I’ve been spared_ that _particular compliment_ , he thinks. The clerk laughs again.

“Okay, so. Mr. Vaughan didn’t do that sort of thing,” prompts John when his voice comes back on line.

The clerk shakes his head. “Never. He wasn’t even polite in a condescending, ‘look how good I am with the Omegas’ kind of way. He just – _spoke_ to me: _me_ , Matthew Bates. Listened to my answers. You know.” He nods at the staff corridor. “Yours is like that too, isn’t he?”

“He’s not—” is John’s knee-jerk response, but he cuts it off and just smiles instead. “He’s mostly like that, yeah. Sure he’ll insult you, but only if you do something stupid or get in the way of his Work. And he’ll do that to anyone,” he adds.

“That’s nice,” says Matthew softly. “I mean, not the insults, but –you know what I mean. Even ‘insults on an equal footing’ is better, sometimes.”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” says John. “But what about you? I mean, this seems like a good job, but I know how hard they are to come by for unbondeds like us. Especially since –well, you’ll pardon me, but it’s clear you’re not on suppressants…”

Matthew lowers his eyes, but he’s smiling. “I’m lucky,” he says. “My heats come like clockwork. Every sixty-three days, on the nose. Never varied once since my cycles settled after I presented. Management knows exactly when to schedule my days off and they have no cause to worry.”

“Oh well, that’s great,” says John. As a doctor, he knows a few Omegas whose cycles run in a similar fashion; one of his patients even claimed to have the onset of her heat timed to the hour. “Good for you.”

“Just lucky,” says Matthew, his smile gone suddenly dry.

Sherlock appears just then, at which both Omegas snap to attention from the relaxed posture they’ve adopted as they’ve been chatting. John’s arms want to cross behind his back in ‘parade-rest’ fashion but he picks his notebook and pen off the counter instead and holds them one in each hand, feeling silly. Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him.

John resists a sigh and turns to Matthew. “I guess we’re off,” he says. The clerk acknowledges Sherlock with a shy, respectful bob of his head. John gets a friendly smile and a handshake.

“Take care of yourself,” says John.

“You too,” replies the other.

“Well, you two seemed to hit it off,” observes Sherlock once they’re outside the hotel doors. “You even managed to convince him not to be quite so nervous of me.” A taxi glides to the curb in front of them almost before the Alpha’s hand has finished signaling for it. “I hope you got something useful out of it.”

Since Sherlock’s definition of ‘something useful’ could include any number of things that John would have thought insignificant, he falls back on his usual practice of simply recounting his conversation with the hotel clerk word for word, as closely as he can remember.

“Interesting,” Sherlock says again when he’s finished, but doesn’t bother to explain what or why. John has learned not to expect such courtesies, however.

* * *

 

By following his purloined delivery schedule, Sherlock manages two more interviews with White Swan clients while the laundry service is on the premises. To John, the data they gather from these two clients (another hotel and a somewhat pretentious-looking Camden Road café) seem almost identical to the first set: each client a fairly stable business at least for the past five years or so; the staff equally ordinary, free of unbonded Alphas and personally acquainted with the victim due to his habit of ‘visiting’. The only points of variation were the reason for choosing White Swan –the hotel had switched from a better-known firm to save money, while the café had used the same failed company as the Bloomsbury hotel—and some conflicting opinions of Albert Vaughan. The Omegas and most of the Betas seemed not to mind, and even to like it when Mr. Vaughan turned up; but some of the Betas and most of the Alphas were put out to varying degrees, though they tried to conceal it with appropriately solemn and respectful faces. Clearly they felt as if the man had been imposing himself on them and their territory. Still, John wouldn’t say that any of the people he’s seen or spoken with today hated the poor sod enough to want to kill him.

He’s also noticed, because the Bloomsbury hotel has made him particularly sensitive to it, that each of the other two clients also had unbonded Omegas in their employ. He finds this curious, and rather heartening –when he was first considering a career, you wouldn’t be able to visit a random selection of London business establishments and expect to find _any_ unbonded Omegas working there, at least not where the patrons could see and smell them. Now, he supposes, it seems to be much more of an accepted thing. At least one of the Omegas at each location wasn’t suppressing their heats, either. He considers mentioning this to Sherlock, but the Alpha must have noticed, most likely before John himself had. _Not that he’d care, of course_ , he thinks.

The extra time that he and Sherlock take in questioning the staff makes them fall too far behind to keep up with the rest of the delivery schedule. Sherlock types a few observations into his phone as they exit the café.

“There’s an afternoon schedule for the restaurants and –a gym,” he says, checking his previous notes. “We’ll get as many as we can then, and the rest tomorrow.”

 _Legwork_ , thinks John, and smiles.

“So, where to now?” he asks, looking around for another taxi. “Lunch? Home? Home for lunch?”

“White Swan itself,” answers Sherlock, indicating the Tube station on the corner opposite.

John blinks at it. “And where’s that, then?” he asks.

“Willesden.”

“Oh, for – _Sherlock_ ,” John calls out as he tries not to stride across the road after the detective. “I could have bought a sandwich or something while we were in there,” he says, jerking a thumb at the café they’d just left.

“No you couldn’t; you’re on duty, _detective constable_.”

John shuts his eyes and practices breathing deeply all through four stops on the Overground until they change for Willesden Green at West Hampstead. Sherlock taps notes into his mobile the entire way.

The staff of White Swan Laundry all wear black armbands, and most of them appear to mean it. (“Though don’t discount those who are simply mourning their job security,” mutters Sherlock in John’s ear, and John ‘accidentally’ steps on his foot.) They want to question as many employees as they can, so they split up, Sherlock taking management and the Betas amongst the lower staff, and John handling the Omegas. There are a surprising number of these: some bonded, some not. It’s true that none of them are management and most of them work in the laundry proper –a fittingly ‘domestic’ job, some would say, if an Omega must work outside the home—but there is also a secretary or two, and the bookkeeper’s assistant is an Omega putting herself through college to become an accountant.

John can tell what an Omega means when he or she says “He was good to us.” There are different manners, different tones of voice in which to say it. Sometimes it means “He treated us like second-class citizens in a nice way.” But the phrase can also mean “He cared for us; he considered our needs as well as any others’; he made our lives better from knowing him.” The Omegas of White Swan are unanimous in the latter opinion. John is astonished, but can see no evidence that their sentiments are not genuine. He tells Sherlock as much when they meet again at the front desk to compare notes.

“Really,” says Sherlock, looking as skeptical as John had felt. “No tension? No fear or resentment towards the victim, no frustrated would-be mates or jealous rivals? Just… they just _liked_ him?”

John shrugs.

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, if they’re all hiding something sinister, maybe you could detect what it is—”

Sherlock snorts at the ‘maybe’.

“—but I’m telling you, I believe them. Or I believe that _they_ believe what they say, anyway. There’s even a woman here from the other laundry service that failed, you know? The one whose clients this place picked up? She’s been here less than three months and she –Sherlock?”

He has a brief flash of Sherlock’s expression, that focus pushing through until each slope and peak of his angular face stands out like polished marble. _A man of wax_ , thinks John, and then _Where did that come from? It suits him, anyway. Sherlock Holmes, the six-million-candlepower brain_.

He wants to laugh, but Sherlock has already turned and is full-steam for the laundry room. “Where,” he shouts as he goes, and it’s not a question. “John, where is she: take me.”

Her name is Lydia. Early thirties, is John’s guess: unbonded, not on suppressants, and plainly affected by Sherlock as he swoops in to her personal space –though it’s not entirely clear _how_ she’s affected, and John thinks she may not really know, herself. He can certainly understand the feeling: torn between the commands of _yes_ and _run_ that shout at equal volumes from opposite sides of the instinctual spectrum. (For John, however, the line between those sides is rather blurrier than some might say is good for him.)

Sherlock sniffs at Lydia and subjects her to a silent full-body Holmes Scan with darts of his laser-like eyes, while John makes fumbling introductions over Sherlock’s shoulder and does his best to look soothing.

“How many besides you,” asks Sherlock, “came over when the other laundry service closed?”

“Um,” answers Lydia, swallowing nervously. “Three others. There was Stella and Jack in Accounts, and then George Pearson the driver. He’s due back any second if you want—”

Sherlock waves her off. “No,” he says. He cocks his head. “You were the only Omega, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“I –I’m sorry?”

Sherlock lifts an eyebrow. “Well, presumably there were other Omegas working there. Mr. Vaughan clearly made a point of hiring Omegas; why not take more? Or if he only had the budget for one, why take you? You’re not bonded; you’re clearly fully reproductive –from an employer’s standpoint, you pose the greatest risk of workplace instability of any of your gender. So I ask again: why did he hire you? Was he trying to mate you? Did you promise to mate with him?”

“No!” The tremble in Lydia’s voice evaporates as indignation draws her up to glare at the detective. “He wasn’t like that, and nor am I, _sir_. I have a job because I want to _work_ , not to look for a mate.” She _scoffs_ at Sherlock; John bites back a smile. “Mr. Vaughan understood that. I should think _you’d_ understand that. Or do you think that DC Watson here only works with you because he wants to _mate_ you?”

The detective’s jaw flaps for a second or two without making a sound; the apples of his cheeks are dusted pink. John decides he rather likes Lydia. Sherlock frowns at a spot of nothing somewhere off the woman’s right shoulder. “No. Er –no,” he says to it. “No, of course not.” He actually looks disappointed in himself. “It was an idiotic presumption on my part,” he says.

“Well, I wouldn’t say _that_ ,” replies Lydia kindly. “Some Omegas _do_ go to work to find a mate, if they can’t get bonded out of school. There were quite a few of that type at the other place.”

“But I should have known you weren’t one of them,” says Sherlock, meeting Lydia’s eye. “Mr. Vaughan did, of course.”

“He did,” answers Lydia with a twisted smile. “He respected me for staying unbonded, if you can believe it. He didn’t think it was unnatural, or that I should roll over quick for the nearest Alpha and get properly sprogged before no one wanted me anymore.”

“He bonded late himself, didn’t he?” asks Sherlock; John frowns, and then mentally shrugs it off. He’s pretty sure no one said anything about it, but that doesn’t mean that Sherlock can’t know.

“That’s right,” says Lydia. “He was older than I am now, he said, and his Doris about my age. He said he was so glad he waited until he’d found her, and that she’d been able to do the same. He said –he said that Alphas and Omegas shouldn’t rob themselves of their best opportunity just because of what they’re always told they can’t have, and what they _should do_.” Her voice breaks; her gloved hands are clenched, shaking. “He was a _good_ man,” she cries. “He just wanted me to have a _good life_!”

There is nothing for John and Sherlock to do but express their condolences and leave. Sherlock will be the first to admit that he’s rubbish at such niceties, but he does not swan off and leave his blogger to it on this occasion. He stands by John’s side with his hands folded while John speaks for both of them.

Sherlock, when the fit takes him, may seethe. What John is when they leave White Swan is _fuming_.

“Chin,” Sherlock reminds him.

John shoves the chin in question as far down towards his chest as he can and still see where he’s going, but it doesn’t stop him sounding like a small tramp steamer. Sherlock glances his way and frowns.

“Stop,” he says when they get to the main road. John looks up and is just about to tell Sherlock that he’s really not in the mood for silly ‘cute’ experiments right now when Sherlock puts a hand between his shoulder blades and guides him into a taxi that he’s just apparently conjured from nowhere. John sinks back into the cushions and relishes the knowledge that his face and body language are temporarily not on display. He shuts his eyes.

Sherlock climbs in and gives the cabbie an address in Kensal Rise. John can’t see him, but he knows what Sherlock is doing: staring at John, with his own chin tucked into the X’s of his crossed fingers. John can hear the whisper of skin when the detective lowers his hands to speak.

“New rule,” he says. “Taxis are out of bounds as concerns our project.”

The tension that whooshes out of John with his next breath startles him. His furloughed body doesn’t know which it wants to do first: cross his arms, stick out his chin, or bristle until he turns into a hairbrush.

“It’s just,” he says at last, “that you know, it’s bad enough he was killed in that way. But it turns out our victim was a fucking model citizen if there ever was one. A good man, a good bondmate, a good employer and an exemplary Alpha. And who killed him? A first-class bleeding arsehole who lets an innocent woman get arrested in his place and doesn’t do a damn thing to help her.” He shows his teeth; his fists clench and unclench helplessly. “They’ll pump her full of emergency contraceptive hormones, you know, to try to prevent her going into heat and starting a riot in the ward,” he says. “She’ll feel like refried shit, and they still might not be in time to stop it. If she heats up, they’ll have to put her in solitary confinement to wait it out. _Solitary_ , Sherlock. Where convicts go when they’re being _punished_. So the guards can’t get at her either.” He’s speaking through gritted teeth, eyes tight and smarting. Sherlock lays a cool hand on the seat of the cab between them.

“Not if I solve the case first,” he says.

John looks at the hand and nods. He takes a deep breath, and another. His jaw is stiff, bulldoggish, but it’s Captain Watson who faces Sherlock now: stern, alert, and resolute. “Okay,” he says, and nods again. “Okay, yes. A week, you said, before she blows. That’s all you’ve got, then.” _There’s your game: a race,_ he thinks. He wishes he could believe that saving the girl would be enough for Sherlock, but he can’t _._

The cab is silent; Sherlock’s eyes have gone deep as moonstones as his hands meet and come to rest as if in prayer against his lips. _And should I care, really_? John finds himself wondering. _If getting that girl out of prison is the main objective and Sherlock is the one to do it, does the reason_ why _he solves this crime make any difference_? Sherlock says not, but it matters to John, and not just for the victims’ sakes. He hates the people who use Sherlock to do their work without a single care for what Sherlock thinks or feels or what benefit he gets from it. To them, John thinks, the detective is like an animal bred for fighting: let him out of his cage to play when it suits, and then shut him away with his wounds and his bloody memories and close the door in his face.

“John, shush,” Sherlock murmurs without looking at him.

“Haven’t said anything,” John answers.

“Don’t have to. You’re like a little staticky ball of worry over there. I can’t think.”

“Sorry.”

Sherlock sighs. His contemplative mood is broken. “If I ate half a sandwich,” he asks, “would that help?”

John nods. “I could live with that.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> End of Day One. John doesn't get a lick, but it's a near thing. Sherlock and the coat get to do some acting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, I must apologize for how effing long it takes me to update this story. I hope it's worth it! The pheromones are starting (very slowly) to fly in this chapter, so that should be some reward, right?
> 
> As always, thanks to **Bitenomnom** for help and reassurance and patience above all.
> 
> Mild warning for Alphas being a bit vile (verbally).

* * *

“Just here,” Sherlock tells the taxi driver.

“But the address is—”

“I’m well aware; I did _give_ you the address after all. However, I would like you to stop _here_.” The detective leans forward on his seat, putting an extra edge into his voice. Sherlock doesn’t normally like to use his Alpha pheromones to influence the actions of others; he believes that people should naturally do what he wants them to because he is _Sherlock Holmes_ , not because he was born arbitrarily into a particular gender. Far more challenging, he tells John, to engage the battle of wills without taking advantage of one’s biology –such laziness, as Sherlock puts it, being more Mycroft’s style—and that much more rewarding when the battle is won. Usually, Sherlock _qua_ Sherlock wins; but cabbies as a class can be some of the more tenacious when they’re dug in to a particular position. This one nearly forces Sherlock into playing his dominant hand, but at the last moment pulls to one side of Chamberlayne Road with a sigh, as if washing his hands of the whole affair should his passengers find themselves lost and helpless a full block from their destination.

“I’m sure there’s an obvious reason that I’m just too stupid to catch,” says John once the cab has departed, “but why did we stop here, instead of up the street where you told him to go in the first place?”

“Because we can’t be seen going in together,” says Sherlock distractedly as he scans the block for John can’t imagine what.

“Sorry, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Sherlock clucks his tongue impatiently. “We’re not Lestrade and DC Watson this time; there’s no point. That café,” he explains, pointing away to where a sandwich board on the sidewalk rocks a bit in the breeze, “is on the list of clients that White Swan was in the _act_ of signing, but who hadn’t signed yet. The staff there is therefore unacquainted with the victim, as Mr. Vaughan had not yet included their establishment in his rounds. However, I would still like to observe the place, as it is possible that the murder was committed to throw White Swan into chaos and _prevent_ the acquisition of certain clients rather than as a revenge for clients already acquired. And you,” he adds, looking at John from between the wings of his coat collar, “would like to eat something.”

“I would. A whole sandwich, mind,” John warns him.

Sherlock arches an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that the half a sandwich which you have committed to eating is not coming out of my lunch. Get your own. Please, _sir_ ,” John adds not deferentially at all, as lip service to the fact that they are now outside a taxi.

He gets a smirk for that. “Not your best effort, I’m afraid,” says Sherlock. “But two marks out of ten for remembering. And yes, the project does continue even now, though you are off duty as my assistant. In fact, you are not to act as if you know me at all; so I _will_ be forced, as you say, to get my own lunch. Ah,” he adds, spotting whatever he was looking for, and stalks across the road towards his target. “Don’t follow me,” he calls back without looking at John, who has indeed started off after him. “We don’t know each other,” says Sherlock. “I shall go in first and then you about five minutes after. Sit apart from me and eat whatever you like. Don’t even notice I’m there.”

“What, and you’ll just be on your own, ‘observing’ everything the entire time? No, that won’t look odd at all.”

“Of course it would look odd,” answers the detective, brandishing a Big Issue that he’s scooped up and paid for before John even registers the fellow selling it. “That’s why I’ll be appearing to read this.”

John shrugs and leaves him to it. Sherlock sweeps off and makes his entrance into the café; the coat, which John sometimes swears is a sentient being telepathically attuned to Sherlock’s moods and needs of the moment, flares out from his shoulders and trails him through the door like a cape. John spends five minutes staring at the various headlines on display at an outdoor magazine kiosk. **_Britain’s Most Eligible Alphas_** , says one, and John snorts at the picture of Irene Adler on the inset. The garish shout of a cheap tabloid makes him shake his head. **_False-Pheromone Shocker: “I bonded with a Beta!”_ ** John sighs. It’s time, he decides.

The café is warm and smells of sourdough bread and tomato soup. John sees a flash of Sherlock’s ankles (the grey trouser socks today, he thinks; ribbed, or perhaps with a subtle pinstripe) and the long sharp wedges of his shoes as they stick out from under his table by the door. He is being served coffee by a Beta waitress wearing a dress shirt buttoned up to the collar under a butcher’s apron. John finds a table on the opposite side of the dining area and is quickly approached by another Beta server in the same uniform. _White_ , thinks John, mindful of the laundry aspect of things. There certainly is a lot of white, from the servers’ dress to the table linens to the plain white shirts worn by the cashier and the bussers clearing away from a previous diner a couple of tables over. John has noticed this trend in certain restaurants over the past few years of putting the staff entirely in sexless, impersonal garb: black shoes and trousers, white dress shirts, form-obliterating aprons, little or no makeup, unobtrusive hairstyles. “Our patrons come here for the food,” the style says, “not to get off with the person serving it.”

As she brings the soup he’s ordered to his table, John decides that his server looks gorgeous no matter what she’s wearing. He can’t help the rather undignified grin with which he greets her. She giggles.

“Hungry, are we?” she asks.

“Starving,” says John, avidly tucking in, and then quickly gulping some water as the still-too-hot soup burns his tongue a bit. His server gives him another giggle and he smiles back sheepishly.

“Long day,” he starts to explain, and then catches himself. Best not to say anything about what he and Sherlock have actually been up to. “At work,” he continues in a slightly different tone. “My shift went a bit longer than expected. No time for a proper lunch.”

The waitress nods sympathetically. “That explains it, then,” she says. “What do you do, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m a doctor,” answers John, which though irrelevant to his current condition is of course true enough. “Just locum work, you know –here and there, as I’m needed. Routine stuff, usually,” he qualifies with a tilt of his head, “only just at the end of my shift today we had a girl in who’d been badly scratched and bitten by a stray cat she was trying to rescue.”

“Ooh,” says the waitress, wrinkling her nose. John waves his hand reassuringly.

“Cat bites _can_ turn very nasty, sometimes, but this one looked as if it was going to be all right. We put her on a course of antibiotics though, just to be safe; and that’s where things got” – _interesting_ , he was going to say, but then decided that was probably a bit Not Good— “complicated. She had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic and her throat started to close up. We had to give her an emergency injection of epinephrine and then some antihistamines to bring the swelling down in her throat and mouth.”

“Oh my goodness,” exclaims the waitress, her other tables temporarily forgotten. “Is she all right?”

John smiles. “She is, thanks for asking,” he tells her. “But after the initial treatment, she still had to be monitored for a couple of hours to make sure that her reaction to the antibiotic was truly under control and wasn’t going to manifest in any other ways. And hence—” he spreads his hands and indicates the soup he’s just tried to inhale.

“Of course,” replies the waitress warmly. “Well, you enjoy that, Doctor, and I’ll be right out with your sandwich.” She gives him another fond smile and leaves him in peace with his meal.

As he eats, he checks the news and his email on his phone and notes some new comments on his latest blog post. He does not look in Sherlock’s direction, though he can hear the rustle of a turning page every once in a while. _Probably has the average time between page-turns for the common newspaper-reader stored somewhere on his hard drive_ , he thinks, _so he can go through the motions in a believable manner whether he’s actually reading the thing or not_. He smiles.

With about a quarter of his sandwich left on his plate, he receives a text:

_When you’re finished, just pay and leave. Wait for me on the corner where the taxi dropped us. –SH_

John accepts his check from the waitress and takes it up to the cashier to pay. The eyes of most of the staff follow him out the door, passing over the Alpha seated nearby who’s been engrossed in his reading the entire time. There is a moment of silence, and then the Alpha snaps the paper away from his face with a flourish that catches everyone’s attention.

“So,” asks Sherlock, casting his eyes over the room. “What did you think of him?”

Nods from most of the staff and the other patrons. An Omega who had arrived just as John was paying his check and who is in the process of taking over cashier duties from the earlier shift frowns in confusion. “What’s he talking about?” she asks.

The other cashier explains. “This man is a producer,” she says, nodding at Sherlock as he rises from his seat. “He’s casting for a new reality show about finding mates for late unbondeds.”

“Just pitching it at the moment,” says Sherlock with a salesman’s self-deprecating mug. “But we’re very excited about it.” He glides to the counter and offers the new cashier a matte black business card and a view of his teeth.

“Charles Mortimer,” he says. “Avast Productions.”

“That man who just left was a candidate to appear on the show,” says the first cashier. “Mr. Mortimer asked us to watch him while he was here and rate him as a contestant.”

“So we can get an idea how the public might like to see him on telly for an hour every week,” adds Sherlock with a wink.

“Well, I only saw him for a minute, but he looked all right,” says the Omega. “A little old, though, isn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s part of the appeal, we thought,” says Sherlock. “Love can find you no matter what your age, and all that.” He leans in towards the first cashier and raises an eyebrow. “There’s hope for everyone,” he says.

The cashier, another Omega a few days from her heat, blushes prettily. A pulse flutters in her neck and she inhales the scent of unbonded Alpha without seeming to notice or be able to help herself.

“If you say so,” she answers.

“Well I thought he was lovely,” says the Beta who had waited on John. “He was polite and funny and he had a lovely smile; there should be more people on telly like him. Most of the contestants on those kinds of shows are just—”

“Whores,” says the other waitress. “Just nasty, obnoxious attention whores.”

“Yeah,” agrees John’s Beta. “But he didn’t seem like that at all. He’s _good_. He’s a doctor. Did you hear the story he told me about the little girl he had in his office today? The one who almost died, and he sat with her for two extra hours past his regular shift to make sure she’d be all right?” There are some nods and some negatives, so the waitress tells it again.

“Oh,” says the Omega who’d come in late.

“He’s lovely,” John’s waitress says again, emphatically. “If you don’t put him on your show, it’ll be a crime. I can’t imagine how he’s not bonded already.”

“He left you a nice tip,” one of the busboys tells her.

“I was watching him answer emails on his phone,” says another busboy, and gives a decent impression of John’s slow two-fingered typing, complete with determined brow and protruding bit of tongue.

“Aw,” says Sherlock’s waitress, giggling. “That’s cute.”

Sherlock, who had been taking notes, saves his data and closes the program.

“Excellent,” he says. “That’s all I needed to hear. Well, many thanks—”

“No,” says the Omega who’d come in later.

“I’m sorry?”

The other cashier attempts to shush her, saying “Kim…” in a warning voice, but Kim waves her off.

“‘No’, meaning I don’t think he should go on your stupid bonding show,” she says to Sherlock. “You heard what they all said; that man saves lives. He helps children. Do you think his Alpha is going to let him work once he’s bonded?”

“Perhaps,” Sherlock answers.

The Omega shakes her head. “They won’t,” she says bitterly. “They’ll make him stay home and have _babies_ and never practice medicine again. He doesn’t want that. If he did, he’d be bonded by now.”

“But he applied as a contestant,” argues John’s waitress. “He _wants_ to do it.”

“He’s probably caving in to a lifetime of people like you lot telling him what he _should_ be,” the Omega fires back. “He’s _fine_. You should just leave him alone.”

“ _Kim_ ,” whines the other cashier. Sherlock draws himself up and shrugs the coat across his scapulae like a bespoke mantle of ruffled feathers. His voice acquires a layer of burning coal.

“The aim of this project is to find each contestant a mate who is worthy of _them_ ,” he tells them. “In this man’s case, we would be required to find an Alpha who would never dream of attempting to make him anything but the fine person he is. And we will,” he adds, his gaze now fixed on John’s defender until she steps back with a gulp. “I promise you that.”

He is gone in a swirl of coat, leaving the occupants of the café blinking as if they’d been struck between the eyes.

“Well,” says the Beta who had waited on John. “I guess it’s a good thing you’re too young to go on that show, eh, Kim? They wouldn’t let you on now if you asked them, pissing off their producer like that.”

“I wouldn’t ask them,” Kim snaps back.

“I would,” sighs the other Omega, “if it was him they had for the prize. He’s _quite_ dishy. You didn’t think so?”

Kim scoffs as she takes her place behind the counter, but her eyes are drawn to where Sherlock had swept past the view of the café window.

“He might be all right, yeah,” she says.

* * *

 

His blogger collected, Sherlock flags down another taxi and gives the cabbie the next address on their list. They ride in silence for a few minutes while John tries to keep from slipping into a post-prandial catnap. His eyelids drop once, twice, and are about to go down for the third time when Sherlock stirs on the seat next to him. John blinks himself to alertness and looks over to find the detective peering at him.

“That was all true, what you told them,” says Sherlock.

“Mm? What?” John answers, his sleepiness falling away. “You mean about the patient with anaphylaxis? Yes, it was,” he says. “Well, except the bit about it happening today, of course.”

“When did it happen?”

“About a month ago.”

Sherlock blinks, and his eyes go into what John calls ‘working’ mode, like the little rotating sphere thing with the arrow on his computer screen when it’s busy. The whirring stops, and Sherlock peers at him again. “About a month ago,” he says, “you were two hours late coming home from the surgery, and never answered my texts.”

They’re in a taxi, so John can allow his chin to jut a little. “Correct.”

Sherlock’s voice is strangely soft. “A nurse could have watched her,” he says.

John looks at the floor of the cab and wishes to God that Sherlock would attend to his non-verbal ‘leave it’ cues just for bloody once.

“True,” he answers.

“Or you could have passed her off to the doctor who was actually supposed to be on duty at the time.”

That does it. “Yes, all right,” he says, flinging up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t have to stay; it’s true, I confess. I _chose_ to stay, instead of coming home and fetching you your pen or whatever it was you wanted. It wouldn’t have made a difference, Sherlock. If I’d come home, I’d be wondering how she did all night, and you would have told me off eventually anyway because I’d have been too distracted to pay proper attention to your needs.” He crosses his arms, wondering briefly if he’ll ever stop noticing that now when he does it. “I’m not sorry,” he huffs, “so don’t expect me to apologize.”

“John, that’s not what I—” Sherlock’s voice stutters to a halt. He frowns.

“I know why you stayed,” he says after a moment. “Of course you stayed. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”

“Thank you.”

“So why didn’t you tell me, that that was the reason?”

“Oh, because I didn’t think you’d care. And clearly,” says John with a sigh, “you don’t.”

“Nonsense,” says Sherlock. “It matters. I mean, obviously I’m just as inconvenienced either way—”

John lets out a pathetic little laugh.

“—but it does make a difference if I know that my being inconvenienced is the price of you doing _your_ Work.” He pauses and considers with a tilt of his head. “The part of it that makes you proud, at least,” he says. “What doesn’t challenge you shouldn’t inconvenience either of us.”

For John, the sad thing is that in saying this Sherlock obviously thinks he’s being very Good –and he is: a part of John glows warm and alive with satisfaction and fond regard for his friend who has made him this rare gift of his respect. But what twists in John’s gut is the fact that something’s missing –there’s _always_ something, and Sherlock is too blind even to guess.

 _And what about the little girl_? John could ask. _The life I watched over that day –the family who loves her –the future she may never have had, if something had gone wrong? Does any of that matter to you, outside of the challenge it brought me in my Work_?

“All right; where to now?” he asks instead.

For the sake of their friendship and the undeniable, incalculable good it does them, they each have learned not to ask those kinds of questions. The answers that inevitably come would only leave them both disappointed, staring frustrated and mute across a gap that John is afraid may never close.

* * *

 

They return to their roles as New Scotland Yard, ticking two restaurants and the gym off the list before Sherlock calls a halt. John does a mental catalogue of the fridge’s contents in the taxi back to Baker Street and decides that there’s enough for dinner already without a trip to Tesco. _Good_ , he thinks. He’ll be glad not to have to mind himself in yet another public place.

“So that’s Day One in the books, then?” he asks when the door to the sitting room at 221B closes behind them. “We now return you to your regularly scheduled John Watson behavior?”

Sherlock, who has been typing into his phone without saying a word for the better part of twenty minutes, blinks and shakes his head. “Hm? Oh. No,” he says. “Not yet. Still missing some crucial data.”

“Oh come on, Sherlock; really?” John protests. “Under what circumstances could you possibly still need to see me acting _outranked_ by everyone?”

“In the situation that brought all this on, of course,” replies Sherlock. “Having a quiet pint, watching a match and not doing anything of which you’re aware that might invite Alphas to lick you.”

John gapes at him. “What are you saying?” he sputters. “Do you actually think that the licking incidents might decrease if I were to hang around bars acting – _deferential_?”

Sherlock clears his throat; it sounds like iron getting annoyed at having the rust scraped off it. “Once again, John, I am not proposing these behavioral changes as possible solutions, but to isolate the relevant factors involved in peoples’ reactions to you,” he says. “Alphas behave a certain way towards you even though your attitude towards them in these situations ranges from polite at best to aggravated and hostile at worst.” He waves off John’s squawk of denial. “I’d just like to ascertain if any significant change in _their_ behavior would result, were you to act as though you might be interested.”

As John still tries to force a coherent reply through his larynx, Sherlock extends his arm with a flourish and checks his watch.

“You shall have some time to relax, eat and change clothes, if you wish,” he says. “We leave at nine.” And without waiting to hear a response, he retires to the sofa to think.

* * *

 

The bar Sherlock chooses for them is not one to which John has been before, but is close enough in style and clientele to be very like the type of bar John _does_ go to, when he goes out. _Optimal testing conditions_ , John thinks to himself, and doesn’t know whether to laugh or shudder. _Replicate the subject’s natural environment as closely as possible so as not to skew the almighty data_. He doesn’t even want to know how Sherlock found this place, or how he knew what to look for.

“If I see anyone I know,” he tells Sherlock, “we’re leaving.”

They enter separately, as if they are strangers. John takes a table near the back, against the far wall, and orders a pint when the server comes around. Sherlock perches on a bar stool just by the door; the viewing angle and his exaggerated height advantage give him an uninterrupted view of the Omega and everyone with whom he interacts. As his pint is delivered, however, John imagines that he must be a very boring subject to observe at the moment. The long day and Sherlock’s words to him earlier have put him in a quiet, introspective sort of mood –not exactly the life of the party; certainly not sending out any ‘come-hither’ signals to Alphas or anyone else.

Once upon a time, John reflects, he did enjoy an Alpha’s company on occasion, when he could get it. _Has it really been that long_? he wonders. In the Army, of course, there were Alphas everywhere, but he was on so many military-grade hormone suppressants back then that he barely noticed them as such. Before that, though… yes, there was a time when he would get the itch every few months or so and go on the pull for an Alpha. A completely different game, that, than seducing Betas like Sarah Sawyer. Getting off with Betas is a dance, a chase, sometimes a hunt; but it’s always John on the scent, driving the game. Playing for an Alpha is truly a _pull_ ; or that’s how John felt it, anyway, back then. He’d imagined himself at the center of his own instinctual, biological landscape: a warm, pulsing heart and an aching belly, skin that smiled and stretched and yearned to be touched, sending out pheromone-tendrils of desire and waiting for the answering tug of an Alpha on the other end. He remembers –it’s been so long that he’d forgotten until now—the low shiver of excitement he used to feel as each new captive (each potential conqueror) approached, like an angler feeling a catch on his line and wondering what he’ll see when it surfaces. _Maybe_ , he would think, _this time_ …

He used to be foolish enough to think such things, he tells himself now.

But has his attitude towards Alphas changed from sensibly cautious and realistic to unreservedly cynical and dismissive, while he wasn’t looking? Has some vital part of him decided in advance that _no_ Alpha is really worth a pull?

As John thinks, Sherlock watches, but as there are no Alphas in the bar besides those with bondmates already in tow, he does not force John out of his reverie. He’s beginning to consider moving to another test location when the door opens and admits a troop of Alphas; a quick scan reveals them to be exclusively male, aged from late twenties to mid-fifties, all unbonded, and in various stages of inebriation. Sherlock wrinkles his nose.

Naturally, the space around where he’s sitting is the emptiest space at the bar, so the Alphas cluster round in the hopes of being spotted and served another drink with all possible speed. They nod at Sherlock, not too drunk to sniff him out as one of their gender but too drunk to realize how very unlike them he really is.

“All right, there, my son?” says one of the younger ones, clapping Sherlock heavily on the shoulder. “‘S’matter? Got a bit of a long face on you, looks like.”

“’Course he has,” says another Alpha. (Older, just about the age of their victim, but not as well off. Also, this man was never bonded, though judging by his jacket and his fingernails he was once married to a Beta; now divorced. Most likely reason would be the Alpha’s wandering eye. And hands. And whatever other bits of him could find a place to wander to.)

The fellow snorts. “Ain’t no bloody Omegas here, innit?” he says. “Unless they’re on the tether. Eh? That’s why you’re sat here looking like the dog shat in your flowerbed. I sympathize, my friend, I do. I had such a taste for a good Omega tonight. There just don’t seem to be any free ones left in the whole bleedin’ city.”

“That one there isn’t bonded,” says Sherlock, pointing down to John’s table.

“Where?” He cranes his neck over the crowd and spots John. “Hm, didn’t see him before. Oh, yes, that’s a nice little honey pot. Tryin’ to catch a fly.” He chuckles, and then frowns. “But you’re slunk in this corner all the same,” he says. “No cop there, is it? Or couldn’t you close the deal?”

“No, he’s fine, I suppose,” says Sherlock. “I just –prefer women, that’s all.”

The Alpha laughs. “You serious, mate? That kind of thing might make a difference with Betas, but –well, you’ve had an Omega, surely, ain’t you? Yer not _that_ funny-lookin’, innit; and anyway some Omegas go for them snooty types like yourself.” He leans in. “An Omega’s the same from behind no matter what’s hanging out in front; you know that, right?” he says. “‘Specially when it’s heated up.” He passes a knowing grin around with his fellows at the bar.

“Truer words,” says one of them, gazing into his glass. “A he-hole’s as sweet as a she-hole, long as it’s dripping for ya.”

The older Alpha orders a pint of whatever John is having and takes his leave of the group. “Don’t wait up,” he says with a wink. He raises his glass to Sherlock in salute. “Cheers,” he says. “I don’t mind because it means there’s more for me tonight, but as your elder and better it’s my duty to pass along the wisdom of my experience. Only one thing matters when you’re looking to pull an Omega, my friend.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

“Whether it’s likely to put up a fight.”

And with that, he weaves off in John’s direction.

John had smelled the Alphas as soon as they came in. Everyone had, except those too far gone in their cups to notice. The room is full of their scent and the reactive pheromones thrown out by the other patrons –attraction from the Betas with Omega or ‘bottom’ tendencies, rejection from the bonded Omegas and a simmering territorial defensiveness from their mates. John watches as the Alphas surround Sherlock, fighting back the urge to stick his bristly self between them and his detective. He wonders if Sherlock is experiencing flashes of his youth right now, when he must have been forced by moronic societal rules into packs like this one, and told by officious idiots to _belong_. John knows as well as any genius how quickly and how thoroughly Sherlock would have demonstrated to his ‘peers’ that he neither belonged nor cared to for a million pounds –and how the other Alphas must inevitably have reacted. John sits forward, tense at the haunch and fists at the ready, until he catches sight of Sherlock’s face. The detective looks crowded and uncomfortable, but not actively bothered. At least one or two of the Alphas seems to be engaging him in good-natured conversation. _Ah –drunk; and friendly drunks at that_ , thinks John with relief. _I guess he can handle it himself, for as long as I’m sat here like tonight’s dinner special_.

Eventually he sees one of the Alphas break off from the pack and head with a purpose for the empty seat at his table. _And bearing gifts, too_ , he thinks as he sees the extra pint in the man’s hand. _A decent start. Well, now, let’s see what we’ve reeled in, shall we?…_

Though Sherlock has never observed his flatmate with an Alpha companion before, he can deduce from John’s character and his tastes in people in general as well as from the Betas he chooses to date that the Alpha currently courting him has less than a five per cent chance of actual success. However, John has been instructed to act receptive and clearly has experience in doing so, as he chats pleasantly with the man and even engages in some mild flirting that only Sherlock can tell is completely false. The Alpha is well pleased with John’s behavior and buys him a third pint, barely taking his eyes from John’s face to place the order. After several more minutes of conversation during which he winks and John laughs and the Alpha’s hands creep ever closer to touching John’s hands… his shoulder… his knee, the Alpha’s drinking catches up with him and he excuses himself to the loo. Sherlock can see him wagging his finger playfully at John and knows what kind of smarmy thing he must be saying: _Now don’t you go anywhere, all right, luv?_ John smiles politely. The Alpha heads back in Sherlock’s direction with a smug face.

“Your loss, mate,” he gloats at Sherlock on his way past him to where the restrooms are. “That Omega’s panting for it. Bet he’s got a sweet little cock on him, too.” He chuckles. “Gonna be nice to hear him begging me to stroke it for him. Yes sir, I do love them when they’re eager. Well, good hunting to you.” He gives Sherlock’s shoulder a friendly pat and disappears through the restroom door, whistling. Immediately Sherlock sends John the text he’s been holding in draft for a half an hour.

_Unless you care to sample that man’s charms (and possibly his bodily fluids) for the rest of the evening, meet me on the street outside in 45 seconds. –SH_

* * *

In the taxi, Sherlock quizzes John on his experience.

“Would you say that the general behavior towards you was typical of a John Watson night on the pull? More enthusiastic? Less?”

“No, I’d say it was pretty typical. Well, except that I would normally have told that Alpha I wasn’t interested after about five minutes, instead of stringing along a rather drunk and somewhat cheesy but otherwise halfway decent bloke, letting him pay for my drinks, and then ditching him. That wasn’t good, Sherlock.”

“He –he wasn’t,” says Sherlock, and John would swear his ears have turned pink at the tips. “He was a bit crude, at the bar,” he adds.

“Talking to you, you mean? About me?”

“Yes.”

“Talking about Omegas in general, or specifically me?”

“Bit of both, actually,” says Sherlock, and his cheeks are definitely glowing.

“Well, what did he say?”

“I don’t think that details are necessary.”

“Sherlock. I’m a big boy. My delicate sensibilities can handle it.”

Sherlock huffs. “He was vulgar, is that not enough?” He folds his arms in front of him and _squirms_. “I didn’t,” he starts, and then pinches his lips and starts again. “I thought what he said was entirely inappropriate, and I’m not inclined to repeat it.”

John may not think of himself as cute, but he has to admit that Sherlock’s a bit adorable when his shyness about certain subjects leads him to talk like a stiff-shirted Victorian.

“Ah,” he says. “Well. Sod him, then.”

Sherlock snorts, but the line of his shoulders relaxes and John can see the tiny twitch of his mouth even in the shadows of the taxi. “Indeed.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 2 begins with a new set of clients to interview and a new set of instructions for John. It doesn't take long before the doctor and detective each have a curious encounter with a different woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worst... prompt filler... ever.
> 
> Yes, it has been some ungodly number of months (I don't even want to count) since my last update. I am so sorry. I would especially like to beg [Makani](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Makani/pseuds/Makani), for whom this story is being written, for her forgiveness for disappearing off the face of the earth for so long and leaving this hanging. Not that it's really an excuse, but I've had a long several months of hideous workload and some writer's block (or possibly just fatigue) that prevented me from making much headway. Also, if I'm honest, there was a bit that was supposed to be in this chapter that I found surprisingly difficult to write. That bit is not featured in this chapter, however, because it got so big that it threatened to overwhelm the bits that came before it, so I cut it off and it will be the bulk of Chapter 6. Which means that Chapter 5 is not only criminally late, but also the shortest chapter I've written in years. Go me! But hopefully it'll be enough to get us all back into the story and then Chapter 6 will be back to our usual ~5000 words. Gah.
> 
> But short chapter or no, it feels so good to publish!
> 
> Thanks as always to [Bitenomnom](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitenomnom/pseuds/Bitenomnom) for support and a critical eye and reassurance that I did actually have a chapter's worth of stuff here. As usual, this chapter is not Brit-picked (but I do accept Brit-picks from readers if you see anything).

“More of the same today, I’m afraid,” says Sherlock when John comes downstairs the next morning. He frowns at the list of unvisited White Swan clients on his mobile screen. “I don’t expect new data from any of the others on this list,” he says, “but we can’t discount the possibility. Any exception to the rule might reveal the identity of our killer. So we mustn’t let boredom distract our focus from the task at hand.”

John snorts. “Hmm, yeah,” he says wryly. “Thanks, but that’s more of a concern for you, don’t you think?”

“True, and thank you for reminding me.” The unusually compliant reply and accompanying smirk cause John’s brow to scrunch in puzzlement, until a sudden thought clears it.

“This has something to do with my instructions for the day, doesn’t it?” he asks.

“Very good,” says Sherlock, and he looks genuinely pleased. “I shall need you to remind me of things often today, I think. This will not be an exact reversal of yesterday’s test conditions; it would be impossible for you to behave as if you _outrank_ everyone you meet.” He lifts a hand to ward off John’s indignant squawk. “No aspersions cast on your ability to command, of course; but society has such preconceived expectations of Omegas in general that to see one giving orders to an Alpha would confuse and possibly repel them to an extent that they would cease to view and interact with you as an individual. However, there are other ways of exercising control and authority than simply barking orders.”

John chuckles. “Oh, I know it. One of our battalions had an adjutant who everyone knew had his commanding officer’s strings in both hands,” he says, miming a man making a marionette dance. “He couldn’t give the man any actual orders, of course; but just about anything that adjutant wished became his CO’s command. There seems to be one like that in every regiment. Not all of the adjutants in those situations are Omegas, but some are.”

“Excellent,” says Sherlock. “So you’ll know how to act. This extends beyond just directing _my_ behavior, mind; you must act as if you know best for everyone and expect to get your way.”

John wrinkles his nose. “Charming,” he says. “And I don’t see how this could actually help. I know you’re still collecting data and not actually proposing a solution to my problem right this second, but if we should discover that acting like a bossy little twat stops people from calling me ‘cute’, what exactly do we do with that information? I mean, I could handle a minor behavioral adjustment, I’d like to think; but a complete change of personality—”

“John, you are working under the assumption that your problem exists because there is something _wrong_ with you that needs to be fixed. Worse, you are repeating your mistake from yesterday in supposing that what I ask you to do is my attempt to ‘fix’ you. Have you once again forgotten the cardinal rule of deduction: that one must never construct a theory without first knowing all the facts?”

Processing the first half of this leaves John unable to formulate a reply to the second half, so Sherlock carries on.

“In addition to managing me and everyone else,” he says, “you must also think of any orders I give _you_ as an inconvenience and an aggravation, to be taken with a great deal of forbearance and only if they correspond with your own idea of how things should go. And don’t be shy about pointing out any social errors I may commit.”

“So, basically the same as any other day,” says John with a smirk.

“To a point,” Sherlock agrees. “Though today when you do these things, you should omit that look you get that says you’ll forgive all of my many faults if I eat something and watch QI with you after we get home.”

John colors a bit and twists his lips at the sitting-room rug for a moment.

“It’s Wednesday,” he says at last, lamely. “QI isn’t even on, so.”

* * *

The first name on the list is a hotel. On the way, John wonders how he’s supposed to issue indirect orders through Sherlock while Sherlock is busy investigating a murder case. The only thing that makes sense, he decides, is if his directives have to do with the case itself –or more specifically, with facilitating Sherlock’s investigation of said case. This, John thinks, will bypass the need to use Sherlock as a mouthpiece, which he doubts would be a pleasant experience for anyone.

With this in mind, he corners the hotel manager and immediately begins to herd and prod her about with directions to arrange an optimal environment for ‘DI Lestrade’ to conduct his interviews with the staff. A meeting room is reserved for Sherlock’s use and instructions given that no one enters said meeting room without John’s permission. The room is provided with a pitcher of filtered water, lightly chilled, and the speakers near the ceiling disabled so that Sherlock is not disturbed by PA announcements or annoying ambient music. John requisitions and receives a list of the hotel staff that includes their positions, length of employment and on/off shift times, which he scans until he finds the name of the person he wants Sherlock to question first. The hotel manager turns to obey just as Sherlock, hands in his pockets and nose in the air, strides through the meeting room door. The detective sheds his coat in one fluid motion and swivels himself into the seat John has arranged for him at the conference table, flipping the tail of his suit jacket behind him like a concert pianist settling in for a command performance. He catches John’s eye and the two share a glance of understanding that the hotel manager doesn’t miss. Only John can tell, however, that the slight tightness of the skin under Sherlock’s jaw means he’s working to repress a smile. He hopes that Sherlock won’t start demanding this kind of pampering in future.

He has to admit, though, that the interview process runs like clockwork with John in control. It’s not that Sherlock is unaware of what he needs in these situations, and when he needs it –in his head; it’s in the way the directions and observations tend to fly from his mouth like shrapnel from the cascading combustions of thought in Sherlock’s brain that causes a problem. People can’t always decipher the fragments correctly or quickly enough, and Sherlock is forced (or so he says later, in response to his flatmate’s scolding) to interrupt his process to contend with their idiocy. John is familiar enough with the detective’s ways that he can interpret Sherlock’s demands and even anticipate them on occasion. And if he’s honest, he gets more satisfaction than he probably should out of managing this series of interviews as well as he has. He takes a minute or two to wonder if his so-called ‘Omega nature’ has anything to do with it; he is, of course, supposed to be biologically driven to provide physical and emotional comfort to those in his charge. Or possibly it’s just that same stupid sense of pride he gets whenever he feels that he’s been of material use to his high-maintenance flatmate. Either way, it’s a bit embarrassing –or it would be, if anyone noticed. But the hotel staff see only an officious Omega DC who is perhaps a bit too enthusiastic about his job, and Sherlock –well, Sherlock only pays John’s feelings any mind when they might affect The Work.

Still, it’s with a dual sense of accomplishment –a success for both the case and the Project; _well done, Watson_ —that John leans against the wall outside the interview room after the last subject’s been shown through. He nods at the hotel manager.

“Thanks for all your help this morning. We appreciate it,” he tells her.

“You certainly take good care of him,” says the hotel manager, with a tip of her head towards the sound of Sherlock’s voice.

“It’s my job,” says John, straightening his back.

“Well, yes,” she answers. “I’m sure it is, technically. But I doubt that too many Met detectives have people worrying about their water and their ambience and generally treating them like rock stars.”

“Yeah, well, most Met detectives aren’t him,” answers John staunchly. “Nobody is. Like him, I mean. The level of –what he does –it’s incredible. And I am proud to help him in any way that I can. I mean –I consider it my duty—” He coughs, feeling a little bit of a twit. “Anyway,” he continues, “don’t you think it’s better if someone like him, or any public servant really, gets the special treatment instead of, you know, some supposed ‘rock star’ who plays just three chords and needs all the technology money can buy to carry a tune and yes, I’m aware I sound like a dreadful old fart.”

The hotel manager laughs just as Sherlock opens the interview room door to let out the last subject. John sees the detective observe the fond look on her face and the sheepish one on his with a barely restrained roll of his eyes and a sigh.

“No more to be done here, it seems,” he says.

“And that’s my cue,” says John to the hotel manager. “Thanks again for your cooperation, and we’ll let you know if we need anything else.”

“I’m sure,” she answers. “And” –still smiling, she pulls a business card from her portfolio—”if you ever find yourself tired of policing and fancy a career change, keep me in mind. I could do with someone to look after me as well as you do your DI.” She looks up to see Sherlock, frozen in the act of snaking one hand into a glove, and chuckles. “Though I understand it’s a long shot,” she continues with a sigh. “You’ll stick to your Alpha come hell or high water, won’t you? It’s the way you’re made.”

“He’s not—”

“But they can be _so_ unappreciative, can’t they?” she asks sweetly, tucking the card into John’s shirt pocket. “Alphas. And rock stars, come to that. We Betas are much nicer.” She pats the card against John’s chest and smoothes his jacket back into place. John’s jaw falls open a bit; he’s not sure if the slight choking noise he hears comes from himself or Sherlock.

“Think about it,” she says with a wink, and saunters off down the hall.

John is the first to unstick himself from the position in which he was stunned. He turns to Sherlock.

“The _hell_?” he asks.

“Don’t ask me,” answers Sherlock. Turning, he strides through the lobby and out the hotel doors, his gloved fists at his sides. “I never told you to pose as some Beta’s ideal of the perfect Omega steward,” he sniffs, “much less to –advertise your _services_.” He’s scanning the street for a taxi as John catches up.

“What the… _fuck_ you, Sherlock,” John snaps back. “You saw me; you _observed_ exactly how I acted. And that conversation we were having in the hallway? Up until the moment she tried to poach me out from under you –insulting the both of us, by the way, though of course you didn’t notice—we were talking about _you_. Not her, not me and her and whether or not I fancy a career change. Just you, and the Work, as usual. Oh, and a somewhat pathetic bit about what an… how bloody much I… Sherlock?” He gapes as the detective continues to gaze out at the street as if no one was speaking. John fights a brief but real urge to stamp his foot. “Are you even listening to me?”

It isn’t until Sherlock actually starts across the road that John realizes that something’s attracted the detective’s attention. He scrambles after him, following Sherlock’s line of sight, and spots a young woman seated on a public bench at the edge of a small park. An open satchel rests by her side with an open textbook on top of it; a takeaway coffee cup rests between her knees. She’s alternately reading the book and people-watching; she doesn’t spot Sherlock until his posh narrow oxford hits the curb in front of her. She looks up and starts, dislodging the coffee cup; it jumps from her lap and hits the pavement where it promptly loses its head and rolls under the bench, spilling its contents like a stool pigeon.

John sees her sides twitch as if she’s contemplating a dive into a nearby bush, but in the end she merely crosses her arms and huffs and stays put.

“Yes; a bit pointless, Jane, don’t you think?” asks Sherlock mildly.

The girl manages a tight shrug and mutters something around a pale and twisted smile. Sherlock’s face gets that barely-contained look of curious energy that always makes John think of a schoolboy wondering how quickly he might get his new chemistry set to do something _cool_. He steps forward into Jane’s personal space, covering her with his shadow. Strangely, this seems to relax her a bit; she returns his gaze with a wryly arched brow but her eyes are calm. _Accustomed to Sherlock’s ways, apparently_ , thinks John, and then he catches the scent of her as she shifts her arms away from her body. _Omega_ , he thinks, _and unsuppressed. Another one. Only this one knows Sherlock_. The detective continues to regard her with a smile that only looks about half as fake as the ones he gives most strangers.

“It’s good to see you,” he says.

“You too, Mr. Holmes,” she answers, and despite her unease she appears to mean it. She nods in John’s direction, her expression unraveling into something less complex, more open. “Dr. Watson,” she says with a brand of familiarity that John has begun to recognize, after his name started to appear in the news alongside the detective’s. He straightens to parade rest, offering her his standard self-effacing nod and smile.

“Oh, _God_.” Sherlock’s head lolls across his suddenly slumping shoulders as if the banality of human beings has caused him some sort of fatal collapse. “Tell me you don’t read that wad of electronic candy floss as well,” he groans. John rocks smugly back and forth on the soles of his feet.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” answers Jane. “Reminds me of old times. You on a case now?” she asks John.

“We are,” he tells her. “Well, Sherlock is. I’m just, you know.”

“Yeah.”

John glances over at Sherlock. He has gone back to observing Jane, whose placid gaze is fixed on John.

“Well, don’t let me keep you,” she says brightly. John blinks. Clearly this woman is a ‘fan’ (in the traditional, non-psychotic sense) of Sherlock’s; in John’s experience, when a fan discovers that he or she has chanced upon the great genius in the performance of his Work, a barrage of questions nearly always follows – _who, what, how, why, where_ —and sometimes even offers of _help_ from those who fancy themselves sleuths-in-training. John has a well-worn procedure in place to extricate his flatmate from these situations before casualties are sustained. Very rarely does a fan just wave them on about their business. Then again, John thinks, this woman in particular appears to be more than just a fan, more to Sherlock than an acquaintance, even; perhaps she is acting as she feels would please him, conceding the supremacy of the Work above social niceties?

Sherlock does not take advantage of the easy exit Jane has given him. Instead, he continues to study her face and the small movements of her hands as they rest on the park bench by her knees. At last he nods at the open coursebook resting print-side down over her satchel.

“Interesting cover,” he remarks.

John frowns. It looks like a bog-standard biology text. Perhaps Sherlock has noticed that there’s an A paired up with a G on the ubiquitous DNA graphic adorning the front or something. Jane shrugs, but offers nothing further.

“Well,” says Sherlock, clasping his hands together as one who’s just concluded a bracing little chat. “Take care, Jane. Don’t be a stranger,” he adds with a tip of his head, and for a moment John thinks he might actually wink at her just as he’d winked at John that first day at Bart’s. He doesn’t, though, and Jane answers with a solemn little nod.

“Goodbye, Mr. Holmes,” she says. “Dr. Watson.”

Sherlock turns and does his taxi-summoning trick. As they pull away from the curb, John tries to decide which of his questions he wants to ask first, or which Sherlock might deign to answer.

“Homeless network,” says Sherlock before John has a chance to open his mouth. “Or she was, for a time. I haven’t seen Jane for some months; thought she must have fallen off the grid. People do that; the homeless more than others, as you might expect. They move, they go to prison, their parents find and collect them, they find homes, they die. The Omegas, of course, occasionally find bondmates.”

“Yeah, or ‘bondmates’ find them,” says John with a grimace. He’s heard of such things happening: Alphas too pathetic, desperate or lazy to ‘earn’ an Omega by actually being worth a bond, trawling the city’s outcast population for someone even more desperate to sell themselves for the promise of food and shelter. “That’s not what happened to Jane, though.”

“Obviously,” says Sherlock. “No: Jane has joined the ranks of the gainfully employed.”

John frowns. “Student, looks like,” he says.

“Yes,” says Sherlock, chuckling softly. “To the average idiot, that is exactly what it’s supposed to _look like_.”

He closes his eyes and brings his palms together beneath his chin in the Consulting Detective signal for ‘engaged in high-level data processing; stand by’. His fingertips tap and press an inscrutable rhythm. John heaves a sigh and looks out the window on his side of the cab. He’s got some thinking of his own to do, after all. Evidently his manner back at the hotel had come across as solicitous rather than authoritative. That may have been the Beta hotel manager’s natural prejudices making her see in John the Omega’s stereotypical nurturing behavior; ‘taking care of’ Sherlock rather than managing his affairs. Even if it was just misinterpretation, though, John has to assume that others might do the same. So before they reach their next destination –someplace near Seven Dials, from what Sherlock’s told the cabbie—he needs another tack to take.

 _Well, for one thing_ , he thinks, _you could stop treating him like a rock star. Eh? That’s hardly accurate anyway. Diva, more like. A stroppy, sulky, precocious, demanding, high-maintenance diva_. He snorts against the window pane, hears the shift of Sherlock’s coat as he turns his head to investigate. John just smiles to himself. He’s got the measure of it now, he thinks. Sherlock himself had given him the hint that morning: _an inconvenience and an aggravation_ , he had said. It’s not as if it’s a stretch to think of the great Consulting Disruptor of All Things Normal that way. Usually, of course, John keeps to the background and waits until Sherlock calls for him (or until John needs to step in before someone gets punched). All he needs to do, really, is not to hold back. Stupid of him, not to have thought of it earlier.

John tucks his smile behind his fist and calculates how long it'll take them to reach their next target.  _This might actually be sort of fun_ , he thinks.


End file.
